KARACHI: The taxpayers and the importers have come up with some positive recommendations before the upcoming budget for the Fiscal Year FY2015-16 in order to extend the tax net.
According to details, the taxpayers were of the view that the total clearance time may be restricted to five working days whereas marking of containers may be reduced by 50 percent and the containers marking may be completed in 24-hour instead of 72hours.
They further said that the Federal Finance Minister Ishaq Dar has already laid emphasis on the vision of the government policy on transparency of tax system and provision of the facilities to the tax payers during his visit to FPCCI recently.
They said that all Pakistan trade bodies have appreciated the efforts of Finance Minister on his mission and ambitions for reforming in the tax collection system.
The taxpayers and importers further said that the lack of integrity, wastage of funds, misrepresentation, inefficiency, indiscipline and on the other hand, promotion of smuggling due to negligence of tax collectors and created a gulf between taxpayers and tax collectors that needs to be bridged through serious efforts.
They further said that the current status of the existing tax system is deteriorating day-by-day and the basic reason is that the tax collectors are reluctant to interact with the ordinary taxpayers to explore their core issues and no efforts has been made yet by the existing tax collectors to reduce the hardships of the taxpayers by taking remedial measures and the eye of the tax regime is to recover the duty/taxes from tax payers through harassment and pressure due to which the trust of tax payers has been shaken which is also a main reason of increasing in smuggling on high tariff goods.
The business community further demanded the FBR authorities concerned to evolve a comprehensive taxation policy in order to resolve the serious issues faced by the traders and taxpayers.
They further said that the dwell time of customs clearance is about one to two weeks instead of 4 to 5days, as the normal time for examination at all terminals is average to 72hours and number of containers marked for customs examination should not be more than 50per cent.
The taxpayers were of the view that the complex issues have been created in WeBOC, automated system which causing unnecessary delays in clearance of the consignments.
“The genuine importers/taxpayers, who are willing to pay 100per cent taxes through true declarations are troubled to clear the goods on time whereas , the Customs department is complicating the process day by day”, they added.
The taxpayers further said that the false claims of achieving or exceeding revenue collection targets, over-reporting of figures and exaggeration in number of people who file returns has brought a bad name to FBR.
“Shifting tax burden from rich to poor and hurting fragile industrial and business environment will never help FBR to contribute to achieve the goal of general prosperity”, they added.
