ISLAMABAD: The Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) has collected Rs 1.067 trillion during the first five months (July-November) of current fiscal year (2016-17), reflecting growth of only 1.7 per cent or Rs18 billion over collection of the same period last fiscal year.
The revenue shortfall has further widened to over Rs130 billion in the corresponding period, while the number of income tax return filers has also decreased by 38 per cent.
The FBR needed 14.5 per cent growth rate over its last year’s collection of Rs1.049 trillion to hit the five-month target. Against the target of Rs1.2 trillion, the FBR ended up collecting just Rs1.067 trillion.
The revenue authority has to extend the last date for filing income tax returns by 15 more days after only 630,000 people filed their returns online for tax year 2016.
About 30,000 returns are filed manually. In the tax year 2015, as many as 1.074 million people had filed the returns after government gave half a dozen extensions in filing the returns, showing over 38 per cent reduction in the number of filers.
