SUNDAY JULY 15: Tea trade anomaly: FBR officials 'forget' to cut advance value addition tax

ISLAMABAD: The Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) appears to have forgotten to reduce advance value addition tax after a reduction in the standard rate of sales tax from 16 to 5 percent on imports and local supply of tea.
It is learnt here on Saturday that sales tax on value addition tax on import of tea by commercial importer remained 3 percent. FBR had notified its decision to introduce 5% reduced rate of sales tax on imports and local supply of tea, besides reducing the advance value addition tax.
The value addition tax has to be reduced from existing 3 percent to one percent correspondently in line with the reduction in the sales tax rate from 16 to 5 percent for tea industry.
The value addition tax is basically sales tax being paid by commercial importers under sales tax special procedure.
According to details, FBR provided a major relief measure in the budget 2012-13, cutting 16 percent rate of sales tax on import and local sale of tea to five percent.
Explaining legal implications of the issue, Arshad Shehzad, a prominent Karachi-based tax expert, told this correspondent that under special procedure, commercial importers are required to pay three percent advance value addition tax along with a standard rate of sales tax. The standard rate of sales tax has been slashed to five percent on tea vide notification 608(I)/2012.
However, no reduction of value addition tax was announced, resultantly commercial importers are supposed to pay five percent standard rate of sales tax along with three percent value addition tax.
An anomaly arises: three percent value addition comes to around 60 percent of the standard rate of tax. This three percent is advance value addition tax which comes to around 60 percent of the 5 percent sales tax applicable on tea. Hence if an importer pays in advance three percent tax, does he get 60 percent value addition to offset advance tax with subsequent sales tax liability?: the answer is no. There is no such high percentage of value addition normally involved in such import-cum-trading business which means the advance tax if paid @ 3% will never be adjusted.
The FBR in recent past has introduced similar sort of reduced rate on imports of textile raw material provided under notification No1125 of 2011 the rate of value addition tax is also slashed to 1% from 3% to place a reasonable value addition tax. The same treatment of introducing 1% value addition tax is missing in case of tea, Arshad Shehzad added.