As a first step towards modernizing the government receipts and payments, the SBP decided to allow the public to pay FBR taxes and duties (P2G) by using internet banking accounts or ATMs. All banks were advised to add FBR (Inland Revenue) and FBR (Customs) as billers in the Bill Payment System offered by 1link and develop necessary integration with 1link by 5th December 2017.
The SBP has now decided to extend the coverage of online tax collection system to provincial taxes as well, starting from the Government of Punjab. The banks and Microfinance Banks (MFBs) will ,therefore, been decided to add Government of Punjab (GoPb) as biller, enabling its tax payments to pay taxes and levies though Alternate Delivery Channels (ADCs) i e internet banking, ATMs and Over the Counter (OTC). The following instructions are, therefore, issued for meticulous compliance:
According to the SBP, all banks will add GoPb as biller in the Bill Payment facility of 1Link at the earliest but not later than 31st January, 2019. However, OTC facility will preferably be activated by 31st December, 2018.
The banks may charge their customers the same fee for each ADC transaction as notified earlier for FBR collections. The banks may charge their customers transaction fee of up to Rs 10 per transaction for tax payments of up to Rs 100,000, a maximum of Rs 20 for tax payments of Rs 100,001 to Rs 1000,000 and a maximum of Rs 50 for all tax payments exceeding Rs.1,000,000.
It may be mentioned here that the SBP under its Vision 2020 has envisaged development of modern and robust payment systems to improve efficiency, security, cost and customer convenience in payments and settlement transactions.
The government receipts and payments constitute a major part of the country's payment system which is so far largely dependent on cash and paper based instruments. This not only hurts the system wide efficiency but also cause acute hardship to the tax payers in payment of taxes.