The Pakistan Industrial and Traders Associations Front (PIAF) has welcomed the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) for planning to give some incentives like tax credits to new filers and existing filers of income tax returns to ensure timely return of filing and encourage its compliance. PIAF Chairman Irfan Iqbal sheikh said besides giving incentives, the problems of tax payers must be settled at the earliest.

The business community does not want to indulge with tax-related legal matters wasting their precious time and money in unproductive things, he said. The number of taxpayers have decreased from 1.1 million in previous year to 0.9 million this year, mainly due to abuse of Section 38-B of the Sales Tax Act. He said the Section 38-B of Sales Tax Act 1990 is being misused by the tax officials who are harassing the businessmen.

Unfortunately, when the FBR initiates a recovery case, the taxpayers are left defenceless as the FBR itself is the complainant and judge at the same time. Instead of focusing on controlling under-invoicing, curbing smuggling and expanding the tax net, the FBR seems inclined to pressurise registered taxpayers who are already suffering due to high rate of sales tax, income tax and custom duties by creating fictitious cases for recovery of outstanding dues to meet the revenue target.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2017