LAHORE: Federal Revenue Alliance Employees Union (FRAEU) Central President Mian Abdul Qayyum has emphasized that if agriculture sector is brought into tax net along with Wealth Tax, there will be no need to get foreign loans or approach donors.
He informed that the revenue collection through wealth tax had reached over Rs40 billion 12 years back when it was suspended by Musharraf regime to protect elite class. If this tax is revived, the FBR can collect over Rs1.5 trillion, he claimed.
He said that the tax department could generate revenue equal to the total volume of federal budget through imposition of wealth tax and implementation of agri tax, which were debated much but never implemented.
He stated that only salaried people were paying taxes and government was constantly putting more burden on them due to flaws in the existing tax system. He added that a number of landowners in parliament had consistently been rejecting agri tax, but now time had come to change this attitude, he said. He suggested that the govt should declare agriculture as an industry so that farmers could also be brought into tax net.
He recommended the govt to declare the national identity card of every citizen as an NTN. Through this, number of taxpayers will automatically reach over 10m.
The FBR Union central president said that Pakistan was a country that desperately needs revenue as many of the problems were being stemming from this.
He also suggested the govt to give back FBR its autonomous status as was announced in 2007 act. He informed that FBR Foundation had been registered with Welfare Department on the longstanding demand of the union. Under this foundation, the employees will avail housing, health and education facility.
To a question, Mian Qayyum urged the FBR high ups to promote the employees of Rawalpindi, Islamabad, Lahore and Sialkot to inspector grades who had passed departmental examination in 2009. ‘Number of inspector posts are lying vacant throughout the country while the employees who qualified for inspectors’ post are very small in number’. FBR Union chief said that he had written a letter to Chairman Tariq Bajwa in this regard, arguing that there had been a rising resentment among the board employees who qualified examination for the post of inspectors.
Regarding budget, union president Qayyum said that no wealth tax had been announced despite a commitment in the PML-N manifesto to do so and direct tax on agriculture income had been ignored once again. “No timeframe has been given for relief in electricity loadshedding and this is a cause of concern for all,” he said.
Qayyum said the opportunity of tax reforms had not been availed by the new team. Instead, the government resorted to old tactics of taxing the already taxed at higher rates.
