Sindh seeks authority for provinces to collect sales tax on goods October 24, 2014 RECORDER REPORT Sindh government is going to demand the federal government to transfer the authority to collect sales tax on goods too to the provinces; said Syed Murad Ali Shah, advisor to Chief Minister Sindh on Finance, here on Thursday. He was speaking at the launching ceremony of the third issue of United Nations Development Programmes (UNDP) quarterly publication, Development Advocate Pakistan: The Political Economy of the Budget held here at a local hotel. He said that Sindh Revenue Board (SRB) had proved its performance through increased collection of sales tax on services, which is far better than the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR). He said that annual collection target of SRB for sales tax on services had gone up from Rs 25 billion to Rs 49 billion in the last three years. It is in stark contrast to the annual transfer of Rs 12-13 billion from Federal Board of Revenue to Sindh under the head of sales tax on services before establishment of SRB, he pointed out. To a question of MNA Farooq Sattar, he said that PPP-led Sindh government was keen to hold local bodies elections, which was due last year but could not be held because of delimitation issues. Moreover, he informed that Sindh Assembly had recently authorised Election Commission of Pakistan to carry out delimitation through a piece of legislation, adding that Sindh government is ready to hold local bodies elections. He also dispelled the impression of excluding agriculture income from tax net, saying that PPP government had the credit to introduce Agriculture Income Tax Act in 1994. He said that it was not an issue to collect income tax from agriculturists but the high percentage of bad taxpayers restrained the authority to collect more revenue from this sector. He said that Sindh government was collecting agriculture income tax at three different slabs -Rs 80,000 to Rs 300,000 and above at the rates of 5 to 15 percent. Murad Ali Shah said Sindh government had allocated Rs 436 billion for non-development expenditures - Rs 136 billion for education, Rs 54 billion for police department and Rs 43.5 billion for health sector for current fiscal year. He also expressed disenchantment over the collection of Gas Development Cess (GDC) by federal government, saying that: Around 70 percent of the total gas of the country is produced in Sindh hence federal government should define in what head - levy or any other, GDS is being collected, he questioned. Earlier, speakers of a panel discussion on Political Economy of Budget said that budget was the fulfilment of parties manifestos in democratic system and it was amended every year as per the will or need of the people. The speakers were Dr Ashfaq, Mrs Shehnaz, Muhammad Sabir and Zubair Motiwala. They said that budget was aimed at redistributing money from rich to poor but its failed to serve this purpose. They questioned that why doctors, lawyers, teachers, policemen, etc were excluded from tax net and added that tax relief to the privileged professions had caused to promote tendency of not paying taxes among the taxpayers. Moreover, they said that the state had failed to deliver tax benefits to the taxpayers and demanded the authority to increase minimum tax slab to Rs 600, 000 from Rs 400, 000. They also requested the authority to declare every income either generated from service sector or agriculture sector as taxable income.
Posted on: Fri, 24 Oct 2014 10:31:22 +0000
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