ISLAMABAD: Almost all the Islamabad-based restaurants were allegedly found involved in tax evasion of billions of rupees, it emerged on Sunday.
Sources told Pakistan Today that the tax department has started a restaurant invoice monitoring system (RIMS) with the consultation of the owners in order to ascertain the real value of their sales, and the department has deployed teams in different restaurants for this purpose.
They said told that the teams have noticed that after introducing the RIMS, some restaurants were even showing no sales for several days and a majority kept their system offline for entire day and would upload a few invoices at midnight.
Ironically, the restaurants are charging sales tax of up to 17 percent from the customers but are not transferring it to the tax department. Officials said that they will take action against those restaurants who will not pay the tax to department.
Moreover, Islamabad Restaurants Association has called for a strike on April 23 and stated that all restaurants will be closed from Tuesday for alleged harassment by FBR. Rather than increasing the tax base, they are just squeezing the existing taxpayers, they said.
State Minister for Revenue Hamad Azhar has taken notice of the call for strike and asked the restaurants to call off their strike as the government we will listen to their grievances.
Most restaurants do not take credit cards in order to avoid payment of taxes.
They go on strike in order to protect their I’ll gotten wealth. Let them protest.
This practice is a normal routine of all the restaurant especially those of high ranked and so called posh restaurant. Because we people of Pakistan are not patriotic as we have to be. No one cares about taking authentic bill,though pay a price that is very high, but as our society is now full of novaureeches. In my opinion the restaurant should issue triplicate bill one for customer,second for drop or post to FBR,and third for restaurants record.
let them do strike … we are with FBR
We all paki nation with truth take strong action with honesty good bless u Pakistan this kind of steps better for next generation no more corruption from people and the govt dept
Government should take measures against these bulls if they want to do some new pertain to “naya Pakistan”
Even now foreigners in Pakistan insist to issue artifical bill slip .
“Jaisa dais waisa bhaiss”
I say let them strike
The amount of tax they pay is very small compare to other countries
I say let them strike
They would suffer themselves maybe not straight away but if the Gov. arrest all these morons after they strike put them in jails, dont give them bail, cancel their rights to do business for tax evasion and threatening behavior and let them rot until they pay all taxes. Impose a hefty fine to make them an example of. AND FOR GOD SAKE ” Do not do a NAB bargain plea” with them.
Many of these suggestions are great. The revenue department must not let these businesses’ owners to do how they want to pay taxes. It should be written at the enterances of any business no matter it is in a village, town, city, on road side, in a gali, or in a mall with Very Bold readable to very clear manner” Report to the Revenue deparment at so and so # or at so and so website that you had not been issued a sale receipt with the description of the item you bought, drank, ate, or else. Write down the time, day, and date in your complain. ”
It will bring about a lot of resistance. However, the businesses will comply. Trillions of rupees are stolen by all the businesses in taxes only per year. Those are the taxes the businesses are supposed to pay the govt. Govt must be ruthless on this problem. All this money can pay country’s annual debt easily.