ISLAMABAD: The Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) will defend imposition of Rs 5,000 tax on air tickets for employees of Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) before the Senate Standing Committee. The Senate Committee will announce the date for the meeting later.
A well-placed official source at the FBR told Customs Today that in January this year, PIA started collecting federal excise duty on free, subsidized domestic tickets being issued to its employees and their family members.
The duty was imposed on all the airline employees at the time of budget but the implementation was suspended in the PIA owing to the protest from the workers, but from January 15 its collection has been started.
FBR expected to collect around Rs 300 million from the newly introduced duty, the trade unions as well as PIA management have urged the government not to impose the duty as the employees, keeping in view the ever increasing inflation, were facing financial crunch.
Then it was assumed that there were around 18,000 employees and if they had at least three members in the family the number comes to around 54,000. Similarly, there were around 36,000 retired employees who also received subsidized, free travel facilities.
Around 114,000 free tickets were issued to employees and their family members during 2014 and if similar number of tickets were issued in the current year then the new tax collected on such tickets would come to around Rs 285 million.
The Senate committee, Tuesday, declared the levy of this tax as an injustice on the PIA employees and decided to seek the clarification from the FBR. In this regard, Senate committee secretariat confirmed to this scribe here that a notice for the above mentioned subject had been issued to FBR.
The notice had called upon FBR chairman to get prepared for briefing the committee on the said issue, however, notice stated that date for next meeting of the committee would be informed later. It is pertinent to note here that Senate committee took notice of the issue on a public petition No-621 filed by petitioner Kamran.
