LAHORE: The Regional Tax Office (RTO) Lahore has achieved the revenue target set for the first 10 months of the current fiscal year.

Chief Commissioner RTO Lahore Nasir Iqbal told this scribe that his field formation has collected Rs 166 billion up to the month of April 2022 against a revenue target of Rs 162 billion.

According to him, the RTO had a target of Rs 120 billion during the corresponding period, thus surpassing by Rs 4 billion, or 37 percent. He said the RTO Lahore was also carrying the distinction of achieving monthly target consecutively during the current fiscal year, a rare phenomenon when compared with other RTOs in the country.

He said the RTO Lahore has focused on capturing the expansion in the economy during the current fiscal year, a major factor behind its startling performance.

Also, he added, there was an exclusive focus on monitoring and enforcement of the revenue targets. Iqbal was of the view that monitoring of the real estate sector had led to collection of Rs 750 million in the month of April due to improvised monitoring of transactions.

He said the RTO has ensured a robust liaison with its withholding agents and kept carrying assessments on the basis of third party data.

It may be noted that the revenue growth during the first 10 months of the current fiscal is not more than 16 to 18 percent nationwide while the RTO Lahore has alone achieved a growth of 37 percent.

It is also worth noting that the RTO has to achieve a target of Rs 202 billion by 30th June this fiscal and it has already collected Rs 168 billion up to the month of April.

Iqbal was of the view that the RTO would surpass the annual revenue target and is likely to close it at Rs 208 billion. He also pointed out that there was an across the board revenue growth in the fields of income tax, sales tax and withholding tax.

When asked about the challenges faced by the RTO in revenue collection, he said, compliance has been a major challenge after digitisation of the tax system. According to him, majority of the taxpayers are not tech-savvy and turn up with a complaint of not receiving notices without visiting their IRIS accounts.

He termed it a necessary cost of reforms process, carried out in the FBR to improve revenue growth over the last one decade. He said the FBR was not in favour of sending notices through the notice servers in order to minimize interaction between the taxpayers and them.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2022