ISLAMABAD: Islamabad Chamber of Commerce and Industry (ICCI) President Muzammil Hussain Sabri has shown grave concerns over Rs126 billion revenue shortfall during six months of ongoing fiscal year and urged the government to bring realistic reforms in taxation system to achieve better economic progress.
He said this while presiding over a meeting of ICCI Sub-Committee on Taxation. The ICCI president said that the government had reportedly set revenue collection target of Rs1,285 billion for July-December 2014, but it could manage to collect only Rs1,159 billion during this period despite the fact that government introduced heavy taxation measures of Rs231 billion in the annual budget. “In these circumstances, achieving annual tax collection target of Rs2.81 trillion for the current financial year seems to be an uphill task,” he added.
“The main reason of low tax revenue collection is that there are many loopholes and flaws in our taxation system. A taxpayer in Pakistan has to spend 560 hours per year in preparing, filing and paying income taxes as compared to only 227 hours in East Asia. Similarly, 54 percent of tariff lines have different customs tariff rates for different importers and there are multiple sales tax rates from five, seven, 17, 19.5 and 22 percent while most other countries have only one and two rates of this tax. It shows that our tax system is very complicated and needs to be simplified to improve tax compliance,” the ICCI president.
