ISLAMABAD: Finance Minister Ishaq Dar is likely to prod heads of Large Taxpayer Units (LTUs) and Regional Tax Offices (RTOs) into achieving the revenue collection target of Rs 2,475 billion during Chief Commissioners Conference of the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) scheduled to be on Thursday.
As per details, FBR Chairman Tariq Bajwa has directed the FBR Members and Chief Commissioners of LTUs/RTOs to prepare presentations for the upcoming chief commissioners’ conference. The national gathering of top tax managers would primarily focus on implementation of the budgetary measures (2013-14), withholding taxes and overall strategy to improve revenue collection in the remaining period of 2013-14.
An important agenda of the Chief Commissioners Conference is the number of persons, who availed the prime Minister’s tax incentive package and expected increase in the number of such persons till extended time of the package. The issues of tax directory of parliamentarians, top taxpayers and new tax directory of all registered persons would also come under discussion. The government had granted a two-month extension in last date for filing of tax returns under the Prime Minister’s incentive package from February 28 to April 30, 2014 to attract maximum persons, who intend to avail of the scheme.
Similarly, the board striving hard to improve withholding tax collection from the taxation measures taken in budget (2013-14) through analysis of each RTO performance during first quarter of current fiscal year. Sources said that the FBR is strictly monitoring the performance of each RTO and conveying the loopholes in withholding tax collection to the field formations.
It is expected that the FBR will also inform heads of the reformed units that the sole focus of the tax machinery should be on achieving the assigned target. The performance would be the only benchmark in this regard as appreciations would be given to those officials, who succeed in surpassing revenue collection target.
Secondly, the federal budget for 2014-15 is under preparation for which the tax officials would be asked to chalk out concrete proposals to create a balance between the direct and indirect taxes.
