Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) Member Inland Revenue Shahid Hussein Asad has said that efforts are being made to bring down sales tax ratio to single digit in next few years. It is also being considered to exempt annual income up to 350,000 from the income tax.
He was speaking at a pre-budget seminar organised by the Lahore Tax Bar Association (LTBA) at the Regional Tax Office (RTO) on Saturday. LTBA President Zahid Attiq Chaudhry, Joint Secretary Naeem Khan, former presidents Naeem Shah, Zia Haider Rizvi, Farhan Shahzad and other senior lawyers were also present.
Asad said that the coming budget would be a people friendly budget and instead of putting extra burden on taxpayers new taxpayers would be brought into the tax net. He claimed that instead of levying new taxes, ratio of existing taxes would be brought down in the coming budget. He said that National Tax Number (NTN) must be issued within 72 hours but issuing of sales tax require verifications so it gets more time than issuance of NTN. He said that most of the budget proposals presented by the Bar had been approved while as far as bringing down the sales tax ratio is considered, he was serious to bring it down to single digit in the next few years as compared to Bar's demand of bringing it down to 15 percent instead of existing 16 per cent.
Asad said that Pakistan was passing through a crucial juncture and needed more revenue. He said that FBR was collecting around Rs 1952 billion at present out of which Rs 900 billion was spent on debt servicing, which should have been spent on welfare of the masses. He termed tax as dividend of economy and said that a strong economy could give better dividend so the government should take steps to improve the economy. Drawing the attention of the office-bearers of the tax bar, he said that almost all the proposals sent by the Bar had been approved as most of these were also forwarded by different chambers, ICAP and other business organisations.