ISLAMABAD: The Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) has withheld payment of around Rs102.282 billion sales tax refunds of exporters and domestic suppliers since 2013.
Sources said that total pending cases have risen to 68,249 in five years. Official figures show that the total number of sales tax refunds filed with the FBR stood at 102,900 from 2013-14 to 2018-19, over a period of five years. Of these, only 34,651 or 37.7 per cent of the pending sales tax refunds were cleared.
Yearly break up showed that an amount of Rs8.215 billion was stuck in 9,631 claims pending since 2013-14, Rs12.24 billion for 2014-15and Rs18.34 billion in 2015-16.
The pending sales tax amount reached Rs22.979 billion in 2016-17 in total pending cases of 12,851 and Rs36.9 billion in 14,113 cases in 2017-18, respectively. The statistics show that the previous government withheld the exporters’ refunds to show figures closers to the revenue collection targets for the respective years.
Even in the first two months of the current fiscal year, the pendency of sales tax refunds cases pile up to 1,363 involving an amount of Rs3.608 billion. The FBR has cleared only 262 sales tax refunds in July-August 2018 period. The amount involved was not disclosed.
