ISLAMABAD: The Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) is most likely to miss the twice-revised revenue collection target of Rs2,275 billion by wide margin during the about to end financial year 2013-14.
According to reports, the FBR will hardly reach at Rs2,250 billion, or even less, against the revised target of Rs2275 billion by the end of June 2014. The reports said that the Finance Minister had been taken into the loop that the revised revenue collection target will be difficult to achieve. The FBR is likely to reach around near to Rs2,250 billion. The reports pointed out that the FBR’s revenue collection is hit by the rupee appreciation against the dollar and reduction in imports apart from other reasons.
The PML-N government remained fail to improve the performance of the Federal Board of Revenue that has not shown impressive work this year. The government had kept unrealistic tax collection target of Rs2,475 billon for the ongoing fiscal year 2013-14 in the last budget. However, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and independent economic experts forecasted that government has set ambitious target in the budget. Therefore, the government has revised the target twice in ten months period because of poor performance of the tax bosses.
The government had first revised the target by Rs 130 billion to Rs 2345 billion in February 2014 from the budgetary target of Rs 2475 billion. However, the tax department was struggling to achieve the target of Rs 2345 billion, which later slashed to Rs 2275 billion in May 2014 after holding discussion with IMF.
The FBR has collected Rs 1,745 billion during ten months during ten months (July to April) of the ongoing financial year 2013-14 as against Rs 1509 billion of the corresponding period of last year, registering a growth of 15 percent. The actual tax collection of the FBR in ten months is Rs 1,646 billion, as it has withhold Rs 97 billion of the tax refunds of the taxpayers, which is not part of FBR’s collection, as admitted by Chairman FBR Tariq Bajwa before the Senate Standing Committee on Finance and Revenue.
Therefore, the FBR would have to collect Rs 530 billion in remaining two months (May and June) of the outgoing financial year 2014-15 to reach the revised target of Rs 2,275 billion by the end of June 2014.
