FBR likely to miss even revised revenue target

Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) is likely to miss its revised revenue target of Rs 3.935 trillion by Rs 139 billion, it is learnt. Rupees 4.013 trillion was the actual annual revenue target that was earlier fixed for tax year 2017-18 but it had to be revised to Rs 3.935 trillion in April due to incessant revenue shortfall.
Despite collecting Rs 3.274 trillion in last 11 months July-May of current fiscal year, the board has to collect Rs 661 billion in June to meet its revised revenue target of Rs 3.935 trillion, which the official sources termed as formidable task to achieve.
Sources at the tax department said that during its meeting with caretaker Finance Minister Dr Shamshad Akhtar, the FBR had projected the revenue collection to Rs 3.78 or Rs 3.8 trillion by the end of current fiscal year, depicting the revenue shortfall of Rs 135 billion.
Moreover, sources said FBR had collected Rs 22 billion per month on the imports of POL products; however, the outgoing government had drastically reduced the rates of sales tax on all petroleum products on May 31, 2018 in order to provide relief to the common man before elections that created negative impact on the revenue collection.
They said the caretaker government, which should have revised the POL products prices by June 7, 2018, had partially increased the same on June 12, 2018 and approved the increase in sales tax to 12 percent as against 15 percent suggested by the FBR in its summary that would engender negative impact of around Rs 10-11 billion on revenue collection in June.
Furthermore, the revenue collection being made on the imports under the head of sales tax is computed to Rs 4 billion per day, which means during Eid holidays from 15th June to 18th June, 2018), FBR will also face Rs 16 billion revenue shortfall, sources said.
Sources further said that the Supreme Court's decision in human rights case no 18877 of 2018 to suspend the withholding tax, sales and service charges on the amount loaded by users of mobile phone from June 14, 2018 for next two weeks would further deprive FBR of its estimated Rs 4 billion revenue, escalating the revenue shortfall to Rs 139 billion by the end of ongoing fiscal year, they said.