ISLAMABAD
The Chairman of National Business Group Pakistan, the President of the Pakistan Businessmen and Intellectuals Forum, the President of All Karachi Industrial Alliance, the Chairman of the FPCCI Advisory Board, and the President and former provincial minister, Mian Zahid Hussain, said on Monday that the failure to achieve the tax target in January is regrettable.
He said that the tax net should be expanded instead of increasing the burden on taxpayers. All buying and selling types should be digitized to discourage cash transactions so that the situation can improve. Mian Zahid Hussain said that the tax shortfall against the target in January was Rs 85 billion, while the total tax shortfall during the first seven months of the current fiscal year has reached Rs 468 billion. The veteran business leader said that one of the reasons for the tax shortfall is the policy of continuously increasing the burden on taxpayers. In contrast, the expansion of the tax net is not taken seriously. Mian Zahid Hussain said there is a lack of trust between the public and the tax-collecting institutions.
The taxpayers believe their tax money will be spent on the authorities’ welfare instead of the public, so they do not want to come into the tax net at any cost, which is a wrong argument. On the other hand, there are numerous loopholes in the tax system, which both government officials and tax evaders benefit from.
At the same time, the country remains at a loss, the recent example of which is the corruption in the faceless system of Karachi Customs. He said that the faceless system was installed recently. Still, corrupt people have misused it, and some officers have been arrested. Zahid said that according to the Finance Minister, some big companies are involved in tax fraud of up to Rs 3.5 trillion. At the same time, according to the FBR Chairman, the top five percent of the income earners evade taxes of Rs 1.6 trillion.
