ISLAMABAD: The Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) expects that the number of filers will double once the issue of withholding tax on bank transactions is resolved with the traders’ community.
Both sides are making all efforts to resolve this issue but no progress has been achieved on this issue so far.
A well-placed official source at the FBR told Customs Today that the number of filers would be almost doubled as well as the volume of tax revenue would also touch the historic level.
Presently, there are around one million filers of the income tax returns in the country and there has been a significant increase in the number of filers due to recent imposition of withholding tax on bank transactions.
The source said that FBR had been following different strategies for widen tax next by bringing more people in the tax net and recent act of levying WHT was also one of these measures.
According to Zubair Tufail vice president FPCCI, once the dispute between the FBR and traders’ community is resolved, the exiting number of income tax returns filers will increase to double figures.
This number will increase because all the chambers of commerce and industry will bind their members as well as other traders to file tax returns despite the fact that no one can become member of these chambers without showing national tax number.
It is pertinent to note here that FBR experienced 22% increase in the revenue collection in last month (October 2015) and it was just because of new addition of new filers of the income tax returns.
Similarly, according to the provisional figures received so far, FBR has made a net collection of more than Rs. 223 billion, as against net collection of Rs. 183 billion made last year showing an increase of 22% in October.
