- PEW president says masses are frequently cheated by the authorities after they are encouraged to become filers
ISLAMABAD: The Pakistan Economy Watch (PEW) on Saturday condemned the move by Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) to mint billions of rupees from late filers and salaried class.
“The FBR is in a habit of milking honest taxpayers to hide its inefficiency and corruption,” PEW President Dr Murtaza Mughal alleged, urging the government to take immediate notice of the issue.
He noted that the apex tax agency has issued notices to over a million late filers asking them to pay two per cent of their total turnover or pay 25 per cent above the tax paid for the last year. The PEW president remarked that such practices tantamounted to deception and extortion.
“The FBR has not taken any meaningful action against tax evaders and non-filers but it continues to punish honest taxpayers to meet targets which will not be tolerated,” he said. “The salaried class has been given the option to pay Rs2,000 before the deadline or face legal action. This step is a solid case of harassment, as the salaried class already paid over Rs133 billion in taxes during the last year.”
He alleged that a section of the business community was in a position to agree to the unethical demands of FBR so that the institution could show enhanced revenue generation.
“But the salaried class, which is already reeling under inflation, cannot bear this burden,” he said, adding that the masses are frequently cheated by the authorities after they are urged to become filers.
FBR is pressurising the taxpayers through different tactics which is like a witch-hunt that will widen the gulf between the taxpayers and the FBR, he warned.
It is pertinent to mention that the tax departments have so far issued more than 278,000 audit notices to the taxpayers who failed to file their returns for the past three years.
According to sources, the offices of Large Taxpayers Units (LTUs) and Regional Tax Offices (RTOs) in Karachi served the notices on November 16-17.
The break-up of the notices showed that LTU and LTU-II Karachi having jurisdictions over big corporate entities and high net-worth individuals sent 2,008 and 650 notices, respectively. Similarly, Corporate RTO Karachi having jurisdiction over small companies issued 62,686 notices.
Meanwhile, RTO-II and RTO-III mainly having jurisdictions over salaried individuals issued 51,601 and 161,251 audit notices to the taxpayers, respectively.
Please correct: the penalty is 20,000 not 2,000
Corrected Thanks
This amount may be reduced to 5,000/-
Another opportunity may be given to Taxpayer cases selected through computer balloting by allowing them to pay 10%of the amount payed with return.
They need to understand it properly. Taxpayers filed their returns late and were selected for audit automatically. Now law(through act of parliament ) facilitating them in 3 ways to skip audit proceedings:
1-Okay minimum penalty of Rs. 20,000 or
2- pay 25% more tax than the previous year in case of taxpayers who are in business
Or
3- pay 2% tax on their total receipts/turnover
P.s. It’s not inefficiency of FBR but taxpayers that they did not fulfil their legal responsibility by filing their returns on time despite the fact that extensions were allowed for more than 06 months.
Stop maligning FBR all the time.
Madam, stop defending this board FBR, late filers are indeed filers, instead of penalizing late filers, FBR must penalize those who are non-filers, there are only around 800k filers in population of 20cr, what if I won’t file return from day one, would FBR do any thing against me then. and penalty of 20K is just unjust for those who has total tax liability of 10K and that to already deducted & paid through the employer.
You don’t understand. People who are becoming filers are subjected to this penalty while non filers are going scot free. This is clearly discouraging masses from becoming filers.
Madam, I became filer back in 2015 and as per their rule, I had to file returns for two years at least to become ATL. I filed my return under amnesty scheme which allowed me to file two years return without any penalty.
more than 50% of salaried class became filer during 2015 session. and all those are now getting notices.
well whatever is harming people it should be avoidable.
This has been done by FBR headquarters on the instructions of the govt. This change has been brought by the pti gov in the ordinance through mini budget.
I really hope new govt will take care of their community in a better way.
New govt is only interested in industrialists and investors. And it’s their community. Engro and likes
It means non filer is better than filer because he is escaped from penalty .
thank you