ISLAMABAD: Federal Government has decided to constitute a 23 member Tax Advisory Committee which will have a mandate to give tax advice and formulate budget proposals for the next fiscal year.
The Federal Board of Revenue will provide the secretariat support for the committee. FBR Chairman Tariq Bajwa will chair the committee. A notification in this regard will be made public soon.
The committee will comprise of business leaders, former bureaucrats, chartered accountants and tax professionals in a bid to represent the lobbies that generally express their resentment after the announcement of the budget.
The government had to face a barrage of criticism from all quarters after it presented its first budget in June last year. The business community kept pressurising the government even months after the passage of the budget and eventually won tax concessions.
Learning from the experience, the government has given membership to all the five main Chambers i.e., chambers of Islamabad, Karachi, Lahore, Peshawar, Quetta and to the Federation of Pakistan Chambers of Commerce and Industries, while also bringing into the fold other influential industrialists, sources said.
The tax proposals submitted by the business community will be scrutinised by the committee, which will allow the government face-saving in a post budget scenario, they added.
The idea to constitute a tax advisory committee had originally been floated to simplify tax laws, plug loopholes and ensure principles of equity and fairness in the tax systems by seeking help of leading tax professionals of the country.
