PESHAWAR: To generate more revenue for provincial kitty, the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government has decided to increase the limit of professional tax which has not been increased for the last 15 years.
According to article seven of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Finance Act 1990 professional tax belonged to those individual who are working with government on regular pay scale.
According to article 163 of the constitution, the National Assembly has the power to increase or decrease the professional tax and the National Assembly increased it from 50,000 to Rs 100,000, No increase was made since then.
Recently in IPCC meeting, the Sindh government proposed to increase the limit up to Rs 500,000 which endorsed by KP government with an aim to generate revenue for the province. The IPCC meeting proposed that after the National Assembly the provincial cabinet will approve to increase this limit.
The meeting also increase to spend 10 percent royalty of gas and oil production on the development of that respective district which produce oil and gas. This was also decided by the provincial government in 2007-2008 budget speech to spend some percentage of royalty fund for the development of the producing districts.
It is pertinent to mentioned that for the last fifteen years Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government has not increased the professional tax since in 1999 and that was the reason that today the cabinet has given its approval.
