The Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) has announced launching the 'Sales Tax Lucky Draw Scheme' for the first time from January 1, 2010. This has been decided in a meeting of the steering committee on the 'Sales Tax Lucky Draw Scheme' held here on Thursday.
This Scheme is the first of its sort launched by FBR. The scheme is consumer-friendly and will help in registering the unregistered service industry into sales tax as well as broadening the tax base. The FBR will soon advertise the details of the scheme.
Sources told Business Recorder here on Thursday that the scheme was discussed threadbare during the meeting of the steering committee at the FBR House. The committee discussed the legal aspects of the 'Sales Tax Lucky Draw Scheme' to finalise necessary arrangements for the implementation of the scheme. The committee also agreed that the draft rules of the scheme might be vetted by FBR Member (Legal) to ensure that there is no legal deficiency therein.
According to the details of the scheme, the Board would launch it in all the major cities, including Karachi, Lahore, Sialkot, Faisalabad and Islamabad with monthly prizes of Rs 6 million to encourage documentation in the country. In this regard, the FBR has obtained approval of substantial amount from the Finance Ministry.
The scheme is initially for hotels and restaurants but extendable to bakeries and caterers. This scheme was initially aimed at bigger cities like Karachi, Multan, Lahore, Islamabad, Rawalpindi, Faisalabad, Gujranwala, Sialkot and Peshawar. Later on, it may be extended to other cities as well. These prizes will be awarded through balloting to those consumers of the hotels/restaurants who produce the original invoices of their payments to these hotels/restaurants. Initially this scheme is only for the registered hotels/restaurants. Later invoices and receipts obtained from bakeries and caterers would be considered for the draw to attract consumers.