The Regional Tax Office (RTO) Karachi has failed to achieve its fixed target of Rs 48 billion for early six months of the current fiscal year and collected only Rs 38.968 billion.
Terming the poor law and order situation responsible for less collection of tax, official sources at RTO Karachi told Business Recorder here on Tuesday that the office has witnessed over Rs 9 billion shortfall in the first half of the current fiscal year, ie July-December 2008. They said that even though the office has collected Rs 9.107 billion income tax only in the month of December as compared to Rs 8.72 billion during the same month of the last year, it could not succeed to achieve its set target.
Mostly the collection has been done in the last days of December, at the time of the filing of returns by the corporate sector. But, the filing of returns could not be held this year with its full swing due to the riots in the city following the assassination of Benazir Bhutto in the last days of the month, also affected the collection of the tax, officials maintained.
However, the collection of the six months of current fiscal year remained more than the last year, as the office collected Rs 38.968 billion as compared to Rs 36.687 billion of the same period of 2006-07.