ISLAMABAD
While Finance Minister Senator Ishaq Dar is praising the tax department for its performance, the ground reality is almost opposite as FBR has missed the twice-revised revenue collection target for previous financial year.
The Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) has failed to achieve its revenue collection target for 2013-2014 despite revising it several times and taking additional taxation measures. However, interestingly, Finance Minister Ishaq Dar has appreciated the FBR’s team for its efforts to achieve the target. The FBR collected Rs 2266 billion during previous fiscal year 2013-2014 against the twice-revised tax collection target of Rs 2275 billion, leaving shortfall at Rs9 billion.
The FBR’s poor performance continued during entire previous year. The FBR had fixed its target at Rs2475 billion in last fiscal year, which was revised downward to Rs2345 billion and again to Rs2275 billion. However, the tax department even failed to achieve its revised target by the end of June 2014 despite taking additional taxation measures.
However, Finance Minister Senator Ishaq Dar has congratulated Chairman FBR Tariq Bajwa and his whole team who have worked hard to achieve the target for revenue collection during the last fiscal year 2013-14. He said that it’s only due to the commitment, dedication and hard work of the whole team that only in one year there has been an increase of over 16% in tax collection, which is unprecedented in the history of Pakistan. The finance minister said that targets are always set on the higher end and efforts are made to reach closer to that target. Dar hoped that the FBR would devise a strategy to achieve the target of Rs.2810 set for the next fiscal year 2014-15. He directed the FBR chairman to work for simplifying the procedures involved in filing returns and giving incentives to the return filers as compared to the non-filers. He added that the taxpayers should be facilitated by simplifying tax reporting so that people prefer to pay taxes rather than evading tax process and tax payers should be rewarded. He further said that serious efforts would be made for the documentation of the economy.
It is worth mentioning here that FBR collected Rs 2266 billion in the last financial year, which ended on June 30, 2014. The break-up of revenue collection during whole fiscal of 2013-14 revealed that income tax collection stood at Rs 903 billion in 2013-14 against Rs 739.7 billion in 2012-13; sales tax at Rs 1,047 billion against Rs 841.3 billion; Federal Excise Duty (FED) at Rs 169 billion against Rs 119.4 billion and customs duty collection amounted to Rs 240 billion against Rs 239 billion in 2012-13. The FBR paid refunds to the tune of Rs 101 billion during the period under review against Rs 86.8 billion of 2012-13.
Meanwhile, the monthly revenue collection revealed that the FBR has been able to collect Rs 310.080 billion in June 2014 as compared to a target of Rs 320 billion.