Director General of Karachi Regional Tax Office (RTO) Asrar Raouf has said that the government has given a target to increase tax-to-gross domestic product (GDP) ratio up to 15 percent by the year 2015.
Addressing members of Karachi Chamber of Commerce and Industry (KCCI) on Tuesday, he claimed that in Pakistan tax to GDP ratio is lowest in the region. At present, tax to GDP ratio is only 10 percent in Pakistan, he added.
Giving figures of taxpayers in Karachi, he said that there were only 492,000 taxpayers, and added that seeing this small figure, a survey was conducted to assertion the taxpayers potential in the city.
Asrar Raouf said that in a population of 14.5 million, there were 6.69 million were women, 340,000 above 60 years of age and 4.2 million under 18 years of age. All of them were non-taxpayers, he added. He said the survey indicated that there must be at least 1.5 million taxpayers in the city, as against the actual taxpayers totalling 492,000.
Keeping in mind this small figure of taxpayers, he said that the department had started making efforts to increase the number of taxpayers to one million by the end of this fiscal year. Asrar Raouf said that the purpose of his visit to KCCI was to create awareness about the importance of tax and mobilise people to file tax returns.
The RTO Director General said that a test campaign had been launched in Clifton and Defence areas and as a result of this campaign, around 94,000 more taxpayers has been brought into the tax net.
He said that there were different slabs for paying taxes, depending on income. If annual income was less than Rs 100,000, there would be no tax liability, but if the income exceeded Rs 100,000, than it would be taxable.
About new incentives to the taxpayers, he said that if annual turnover was Rs 10 million or daily income was Rs 27,397, the taxpayer was required to pay only Rs 192 per day as tax. This exempted the taxpayers from paying income tax well as sales tax.
The RTO Director General said that a number of people, paying taxes in power bills, telephone bills, hotel bills, marriage halls payments etc, but did not file tax returns. He, however, advised them to file tax returns and they might get some refunds. Asrar Raouf said that the department had made a plan to establish tax counters at different paces in the city to encourage people to file tax returns. These centres would assist the taxpayers in filing tax returns.