The Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) has received a total of 608,587 income tax returns till November 1, 2017, up by 72 percent over 352,022 returns during the same period of last fiscal year. According to the details of the returns filing data for tax year 2017 issued by the FBR here on Wednesday, FBR wishes to dispel the impression created by some reports that the number of the returns received for the tax year 2017 has declined as compared to returns received for tax year 2016. This impression is grossly misleading as only 352,022 returns were received up to November 1, 2016, whereas 608,587 returns have been received till November 1, 2017. This shows a substantial increase of 72 per cent in the number of returns received during the same period of previous fiscal year.
When contacted, an official said that the comparison of income tax returns received (tax year 2017) till November 1, 2017 cannot be made with the whole year's returns, ie 1.2 million filed for tax year 2016. The returns filed till November 2017 can be compared with returns filed till November 2016. The provisional data cannot be compared with whole one year's final data. The last year's 1.2 million returns figure is a final figure for the whole year (upto June 30, 2017) which cannot be compared with the incomplete or provisional figure of up to October 31, 2017. So far, the date for filing of income tax returns has not been expired for tax year 2017. The 1.2 million returns figure for tax year 2016 included voluntarily filed returns and returns enforced after issuance of notices under section 114 of the Income Tax Ordinance to the non-filers. Such notices under section 114 have been issued after expiry of deadline of filing of returns.
Therefore, the provisional figure of returns filed till November 2017 do not include any data which would be enforced by filing of returns from non-filers. The data of such returns enforced from non-filers could only be included after expiry of the final data for filing of income tax returns for tax year 2017. So far, the date for filing of returns for tax year 2017 has not been expired, official added.
The updated revenue collection figures for July-October (2017-18) issued by the FBR here on Wednesday revealed that the FBR has provisionally collected Rs 1033 billion during July-October (2017-18) as compared to Rs 872 billion during 2016-17, reflecting an increase of around 18.5 percent.
According to the FBR, the Federal Board of Revenue has continued to display satisfactory performance in the fourth consecutive month of the current financial year and achieved provisional gross revenue collection of over Rs 1074 billion for the first four months of the fiscal year by recording an increase of around 20.4 per cent over the revenue collected during the corresponding period of last fiscal year. Refunds during this period have been issued to the tune of Rs 42 billion as against Rs 21 billion issued during this year depicting an increase of 100 per cent during the corresponding period of previous fiscal year. In addition to issuance of these refunds, another amount of approximately 13 billion has been issued as sales tax refund to refund claimants through direct credit to their bank accounts.
Provisional net revenue collection was recorded as Rs 1033 billion for the first four months of the fiscal year with an increase of around 18.5 per cent over the net revenue collected during the same period of last fiscal year. The target for the year has been fixed with an annual increase of 19.2 per cent over the previous year.
The provisional collection for the month of October 2017 was 267 billion which shows an increase of more than 12 per cent over the collection for October 2016 which depicts a substantial improvement over the growth of 5.23 percent registered in the monthly collection last year. During fiscal year 2016-17, the collection for the first four months stood at 872 billion as against the figure of Rs 1033 billion collected this year.
During October 2017, according to the provisional figures received so far, the FBR has made a net collection of more than Rs 267 billion as against Rs 237 billion collected during October, 2016. The revenue collection trend during the first four months of the financial year augurs well for the efforts of FBR towards achievement of the assigned annual revenue targets, the FBR added.
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