KARACHI: The country’s top body of business community has has proposed an amnesty scheme for retailers and small traders who are not filing sales tax return.
The Federation of Pakistan Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FPCCI), in recommendations for budget 2017-18, said that there are a large number of registered persons particularly those cottage / small units, small trades, retail shops etc, who have been filing their annual Income Tax returns regularly, but did not file Monthly Sales Tax returns mainly due to no business activity.
The number of such defaulters / non-filers has been increasing every year due to some stringent provisions of penalty of Sales Tax law and procedure. In many cases the amount of penalty runs into hundreds of thousands rupees and is beyond the capacity of registered persons to pay.
Therefore, the FPCCI recommended that an amnesty scheme should be announced for such non-filers of Sales Tax Returns who have been filing Income Tax Returns of nil or nominal amounts within a certain bracket slab and give them the option to either de-register from the Sales Tax regime or resume filing the Tax returns without penalties.
They may be required to submit affidavit that they have not conducted any business in the period when they did not file the Sales Tax Returns.
The proposed amnesty will provide a large number of tax payers the opportunity to come back within the tax regime and will eliminate the non-filers regime.
