LAHORE: Business community would have some good news in the upcoming Punjab Budget. No new tax would be imposed while government would try to reduce the frequency of taxes as well.
This was stated by Provincial Minister for Excise, Taxation and Narcotics Control Hafiz Mumtaz Ahmed while speaking at the Lahore Chamber of Commerce & Industry. LCCI President Almas Hyder and Vice President Faheem-ur-Rehman also spoke on the occasion while former Senior Vice President Amjad Ali Jawa, former Vice President Zeshan Khalil and Executive Committee Members Mian Zahid Javed and Dr. Muhammad Khalique Arshad were also present in the meeting.
The provincial minister said that a new app would be introduced in July or August and after that, people would be able to pay their excise & taxation related taxes while sitting at their offices or homes.
He agreed with the LCCI president that taxation system should be simple and easy to understand to broaden the tax net. He said that good news would also be given in the upcoming Punjab Budget about vehicle tax.
“We believe on consultation with the stakeholders. Revenues of the government would be increased when businesses flourish”, the Minister added.
LCCI President Almas Hyder said that frequency of taxes is one of the highest in the world. He said that businessmen in Punjab are paying around 150 different types of taxes.
He informed the Minister that Lahore Chamber is making all-out efforts to bring considerable improvement in Doing Business ranking of Pakistan. Paying Taxes is one of its factors and our government has yet to take a number of steps to bring necessary improvement in this connection.
“We have proposed to transform the whole structure of taxation system to make it user friendly particularly through automation. Likewise, it has been suggested to bring down the rates of taxes and frequency of tax payments. There are few suggestions related to your department which are as followed”, the LCCI president added.
He said it is a good sign that e-culture is being gradually introduced by the government in most of its departments. He proposed that the mechanism of online payment should be expanded to accommodate the payment of property tax and motor vehicle tax.
He said that one issue that has been noticed is that even after the property has been vacated from the tenants, the Excise Department keeps charging the rental rate of property tax from the owner which is not fair.
Almas Hyder said that the option of getting a lifetime token should be introduced for vehicles up to 1300 CC cars. Moreover, in order to expedite the process of sale/purchase of motor vehicles, the authorized dealers should be given the bio-metric facility so that the customers don’t have to visit the Government Departments.
LCCI Vice President Faheem-ur-Rehman Saigal said that Motor Vehicle Taxes are considerably higher in Punjab as compared to other provinces. As a result, many residents of Punjab are getting their vehicles registered from Islamabad, resulting in a sizeable loss of revenue for provincial government.
