ISLAMABAD-Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) has assured Finance Minister Ishaq Dar to achieve the tax collection target for the first quarter (July to September) of the current fiscal year despite slowdown in economy due to floods and imports contraction.
Federal Minister for Finance and Revenue Muhammad Ishaq Dar visited the FBR and presided over a meeting on the revenue performance of FBR. The chairman FBR and members of the Board (FBR) attended the meeting.
Asim Ahmad, Chairman FBR, extended a warm welcome to the minister on behalf of the FBR team. Chairman gave the presentation and explained various revenue initiatives taken by FBR and issues currently being faced in revenue administration. It was briefed to the minister that FBR has successfully achieved its monthly targets for the months of July and August, 2022 and Inshaallah will also achieve the quarterly target up to September, 2022. This performance is despite the slowing down of economy in the month of September due to floods, import contraction and shrinking of demand due to inflation in the country as well as no sales tax on POL products. 
The FBR has set tax collection target for September at Rs684 billion. The FBR had collected Rs565 billion by September 28. However, officials in FBR are optimistic that they would achieve the monthly tax collection target. The FBR had surpassed the tax collection in first two months of the ongoing financial year. During the first two months of July and August of 2022-23, the FBR collected Rs948 billion against the assigned revenue collection target of Rs926 billion. So far, the Board has surpassed the assigned target by Rs22 billion in the current fiscal year 2022-23. For the new fiscal year, the government has set the tax collection target at Rs7.470 trillion on the IMF’s demand, which will require about 22% growth in collection.
The finance minister appreciated the FBR team for their efforts in meeting the targets. He assured the team that he will extend full support in the performance of their duties and will engaged with them frequently. He advised the FBR team to position themselves to the quick changes in economic outlook. He further advised the FBR to increase its efforts to achieve the true tax potential.
He especially appreciated the work done by FBR in terms of increasing the share of direct taxes (income tax and capital value tax) in the total share of taxes as compared to last year through important tax measures taken this year for taxing the rich. The finance minister also highlighted the importance of taxpayers’ engagement in devising tax policies and revenue collection efforts.