KARACHI: KATI President Faraz-ur-Rehman has highlighted issues being faced by KATI members regarding property tax payments, professional tax payments and motor vehicle tax, etc.

In a meeting with Secretary Excise, Taxation & Narcotics Control Department, Government of Sindh Atif Rehman and Director General Aurangzeb Akbar Panhwar, he appreciated online availability of property tax challans and stressed the need to remove technical issues in the online system.

Further, he stressed on the need for removal of human interaction to make tax collection transparent.

Addressing the members of the association, Secretary Excise, Taxation & Narcotics Control Department Atif Rehman said that last year, property tax was transferred to the local government, and the department and staff will guide and train them till 2024.

The Excise and Taxation Department is only a collecting agency, which transfers all revenue to the Sindh government’s account.

Sindh Excise and Taxation Department would set up a help desk at Korangi Association of Trade and Industry (KATI) to facilitate member’s industries initially in the matters of property and professional taxes, and later motor vehicle taxes will also be addressed.

Responding to a query about calculation of property tax, Rehman said that the property tax calculator is available online on the website.

However, he agreed the suggestion that human interaction in this matter should avoided, as much as possible would yield better results.

He also agreed to conduct an awareness session for apprising the members to calculate the property tax so that members can easily calculation it without any difficulty.

On the matter of infrastructure cess, he mentioned that approximately Rs30 billion have been collected in the first quarter alone (July-September 2023) in the account of Sindh Infrastructure Development Cess.

At this, KATI president Faraz-ur-Rehman emphasised the need to spend some money on the improvement of infrastructure in the Korangi Industrial Area.

Deputy Patron-in-Chief KATI Zubair Chhaya, Senior Vice President Nighat Awan, Vice President Muslim Mohamedi, Former Chairman/President Masood Naqi, Johar Qandhari, Ehtesham Uddin, Zahid Saeed, Ghazanfar Ali Khan, Talha Ali and others were also present.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2023