ISLAMABAD: Although the ongoing tax amnesty scheme has gained a momentum in the last few days, yet missing the revenue collection target will haunt the new Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) Chairman Rukhsana Yasmeen during the next fiscal year.
This may turn both ways; may cast positive and negative impacts on the performance of FBR’s field formations because the outgoing government set a huge revenue collection target for the tax authority for the fiscal year 2018-19.
The current FBR chairman, Tariq Mahmood Pasha, has been transferred and posted as Secretary Statistics. Newly-appointed FBR Chairman Rukhsana Yasmeen will take charge of the affairs of the tax authority form July 1.
A source at FBR told Customs Today that in result of ongoing tax amnesty scheme, FBR would get revenue of around Rs 40 billion as almost Rs 30 billion had been already collected; however, revenue collection shortfall may be of some Rs 250 billion. FBR may touch the figure of Rs 3,700 billion of revenue target by the end of current month, the last month of the ongoing fiscal year.
The source said that Rs 40 billion revenue being incurred from tax amnesty scheme would not be collected in the upcoming fiscal year because this amount was for the one time collection and FBR could not afford announcement of tax amnesty schemes every year to meet the revenue shortfall.
The source said that FBR would have to focus on improvement of enforcement of field formations along with the proper training and capacity building of the tax collectors to ensure meeting the revenue collection for the next fiscal year.
“In the developed countries, nonpayment of tax is treated as a criminal activity and cases are prosecuted through criminal proceedings whereas in Pakistan, such cases are treated as civil court proceedings, but civil proceedings are full of lacunas therefore tax evaders don’t get the required punishment” the source added.
“Therefore, for the treatment of nonpayment of tax cases as criminal cases, officers and staffers are required appropriate training,” the source said, adding that bureaucrats at higher level as well as on the ground field officers would not be ready for such treatment of such cases so tightly.
The source said that the FBR had taken a large number of measures, including the filers and non-filers, to meet the revenue collection targets but those measures were mainly focused on the middle and lower middle class of people, but major tycoons of the country remain out of focus of the FBR’s measures because these tycoons remain unaffected because they passed the taxes over to end consumers.
