ISLAMABAD: The Islamabad Chamber of Commerce & Industry (ICCI) has called upon the government to consider introducing single tax regime in the country that would help in reducing taxpayers’ problems, encouraging tax culture and improving tax revenue of the country.
Ahmed Hassan Moughal, President, Islamabad Chamber of Commerce & Industry said that at present a businessman have to cope with 47 taxes including sales tax, income tax, withholding taxes, customs & excise duties, EOBI tax, Workers Profit Participation Fund and Workers Welfare Fund apart from fulfilling multiple documentation and filing requirements which was a very tedious process. He said this complicated tax payment system was consuming lot of precious time of a businessman in dealing with tax matters. He stressed that government in the forthcoming budget should merge all taxes into a single tax in order to minimize interaction between taxpayers and tax collectors and to improve ease of doing business in the country.
He said there were many success stories in the world where countries minimized number of taxes and achieved higher tax revenue. He said New Zealand has achieved good results by introducing single tax regime while Hong Kong was collecting only three taxes and Malaysia eight taxes, but in Pakistan a businessman has to deal with 47 taxes which put lot of additional burden on taxpayers. He said now the government has announced to bring down 47 taxes to 16 which was appreciable. However, he stressed that government should introduce a single tax regime by clubbing together all taxes that would greatly help in promoting business activities and enhancing tax revenue of the country.
Rafat Farid Senior Vice President and Iftikhar Anwar Sethi Vice President, Islamabad Chamber of Commerce & Industry said that it has become very difficult for an entrepreneur to do business with about 20 payments and filing requirements at federal level. They emphasized that government should increase the use of IT and in order to minimize the interaction between taxpayers and tax machinery, government should develop a software for single tax connection and ensure its automatic credit to all relevant agencies so that businessmen should not have to go to various departments for tax payment. They were of the view that introducing a single tax regime would be a revolutionary step towards bringing drastic reforms in Pakistan’s taxation system and making it business friendly tax system.
