ISLAMABAD: Muhammad Javed Ghani, Chairman Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) has assured the business community that the key issues of the business and trade would be addressed through policy measures, streamlining refund payments, simplified procedures and facilitative measures like 'agreed assessments' and revised Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) mechanism to encourage investment and voluntary compliance.
He said this while talking to a delegation of Islamabad Chamber of Commerce and Industry (ICCI) that called on him led by Muhammad Ahmed Waheed, President. Tahir Abbasi Senior Vice President ICCI, Malik Sohail Hussain Chief Coordinator UBG FPCCI and Ahsan Zafar Bakhtawari former Vice President ICCI were in the delegation.
Accepting the invitation of Muhammad Ahmed Waheed, Javed Ghani said that he would visit ICCI for an interaction with the business community to know about their tax issues and get their input for bringing further improvements in the prevailing tax system. He said that efforts would be made to evolve a taxation system that could facilitate the growth of economic activities and help in improving tax revenue of the country.
Tax authorities welcomed the suggestions of delegation members for resolving problems and broadening the tax base.
Speaking at the occasion, Muhammad Ahmed Waheed, President, Islamabad Chamber of Commerce & Industry congratulated Muhammad Javed Ghani for assuming the charge of Chairman FBR and hoped that he would take measures to address the key tax issues of business community and promote the vision of the Prime Minister to turn Pakistan into a fast growing economy.
He said that the current government has made commitments to streamline the payment of tax refunds, but the process was quite slow due to which the business community was facing liquidity issues. He said the Covid-19 pandemic has created extraordinary challenges for the business community and the overall economy and this situation necessitated that FBR should focus on speedy automation of refunds including customs duty, sales tax and income tax to ensure that all tax refunds were automatically transferred to the bank accounts of the concerned taxpayers. He said that another better option to solve the refunds issue was to allow taxpayers to adjust their payable taxes against the accumulated refunds. This mechanism would not only address the liquidity issues of business community; it would also improve the tax revenue of the government.
ICCI President said that under Section-8B of Sales Tax Act, a registered person was not allowed to adjust input tax in excess of 90 per cent of the output tax for that tax period, which was not justified. He said that taxpayers have to deposit 0.10 percent of the sales tax amount in cash at the time of depositing sales tax returns and stressed that in these tough conditions, FBR should allow 100 percent adjustment of input tax against the output tax and abolish the condition 0.10 percent cash payment of the sales tax amount while depositing sales tax returns. It would ease the problems of business community and save businesses from financial troubles.
Tahir Abbasi Senior Vice President ICCI, Malik Sohail Hussain Chief Coordinator UBG FPCCI and Ahsan Zafar Bakhtawari former Vice President ICCI also gave many useful suggestions.
They said that taxpayers should be allowed 100 percent adjustment of input tax as depriving them of 10 percent input tax was an injustice with them. They said that current difficult circumstances required that FBR should take maximum relief measures for the business community so that they could feel facilitated in fostering business and economic activities.
They were of the view that providing facilitation to business community in tax matters would pave way for early recovery of our economy and steering the country out of current challenges.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2020