ISLAMABAD: In a bid to unearth sources of incomes, Pakistan’s top tax machinery said on Wednesday that it is collecting data about investment by people in real estate projects. “We have approached Defence Housing Authorities and Bahria Town real estate projects to collect data about investors to identify whether they exist on the tax roll or were avoiding payment of income tax,” Federal Board of Revenue Chairman Tariq Bajwa told newsmen in Islamabad on Wednesday. Mr Bajwa was talking to journalists for the first time after his appointment as chairman to share his plans for pursuing the Rs2475 billion revenue collection target for the current fiscal year 2013-14. The chairman said that overseas Pakistanis were sending their money through remittances, which mostly ended up in the real estate. However, he said the tax machinery did not have accurate data about these investments. Mr. Bajwa said the intension of the data collection about investment in real estate was not to tax the transactions, but actually to identify potential people who do not exist on the tax rolls. The chairman agreed that remittances are attracting nominal taxes and taxing these inflows can generate substantial revenue, but the government wanted to facilitate remittances which are required for balance of payments. He said data collection about land transactions was one of the attempts to broaden the narrow tax base of the country. Currently only 7, 11,940 people have filed up e-returns with the government which is less than 0.5pc share of the total population. “We want to increase this share to 2 or 2.5pc in the next five years”, he said. He said FBR was also getting data regarding vehicle owners and international travellers. The provincial motor vehicle authorities and aviation ministry have been approached for getting data, he added. The chairman said that FBR was also in negotiations with Nadra over the data and its usability. He said for the current fiscal year, 100,000 new potential people would be brought under the tax net. Last government tried to enhance the tax base through amnesty schemes, however, only amnesty schemes for car registration were introduced. Mr Bajwa said that he was not in favour of any amnesty scheme because it inflicts more harm on economy in the long terms despite its short terms gains. Asked about the amnesty scheme for stock market, the chairman said this amnesty scheme will continue until 2014. He said he cannot do anything about this amnesty. The FBR chairman said that revenue measures taken in the budget along with administrative measures would yield additional revenue of Rs535bn in the current fiscal year. “We will achieve the revenue collection target for the current fiscal year,” he said, adding the impact of income support levy and increase in turn-over tax would be witnessed in September. He said that the growth in GDP along with inflation would also add an additional revenue for the government. The FBR chairman said that collection of withholding tax would be made more effective. Mr Bajwa said PIA collected federal excise duty on air tickets last year, but the same was not deposited with the FBR. The chairman said there was zero tolerance about corruption in the FBR. On corruption charges, the chairman said two officers of customs were suspended in Karachi. The chairman said FBR has not accessed bank accounts data so far.
Posted on: Thu, 29 Aug 2013 19:13:02 +0000
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