Islamabad: Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) failed to meet its first quarter (July-September) revenue target for financial year 2017-18, reported a local newspaper.
Till Friday evening, the FBR was said to have collected Rs753b during July-September quarter against its target of Rs782.1b. According to its officials, Rs8b payments were expected soon, which would help to plug the shortfall and reduce it to Rs20b.
FBR collection has been averaging over 20pc growth, but is still failing to achieve the quarterly target. Also, the deadline for filing income tax returns was extended for another month to 31st October by Finance Minister Ishaq Dar on Friday.
A touch over 200,000 income tax returns were received by the tax watchdog till September 29th. This number was just 17pc of the total income tax returns filed in the entire last financial year.
The FBR’s failure to enforce the Income Tax Policy has been blamed for the lower number of returns, considering only 1.2m individuals filed their income and asset statements out of a total of 4.3m registered people.
Revenue collection reached Rs753b, predominantly aided by indirect taxation which included levying custom duties. During the July-September quarter, provisional tax collection grew by Rs126b or 20pc against same period last year (SPLY).
Tax collection target for FY 2017-18 is set at Rs4.013t, and the revenue collection for July-September quarter constituted 18.7pc of the total. FBR’s revenue collection for September stood at Rs304b, an increase of 16pc on a year-on-year (YoY) basis.
In a statement on Friday, State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) said the country was facing challenges on the external front which was causing hindrances to higher economic growth.
