The Senate Committee on Delegated Legislation in its meeting on Wednesday was briefed by Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) regarding the subordinate legislation, rules, regulations, orders, SROs, and bylaws schemes which FBR carries out for the purposes of parent legislation. The meeting was held under the chairmanship of Senator Kauda Babar here at the Parliament House and was attended among others by Senators Dr Asad Ashraf, Saleem Zia, Rubina Khalid, Kalsoom Parveen, Mir Hasil Bizenjo, Min Raza Rabbani and Mirza Muhammad Afridi, Chairman FBR Shabbar Zaidi and senior officials from the FBR.
The meeting was told that all the acts of Parliament and rules and regulations relating to FBR are available on FBR's website and are made public. The committee decided to go through all the pieces of parent and subordinate legislations and discuss them subsequently.
Chairman FBR Shabbar Zaidi said that one of the objectives of FBR is to make the tax system simpler, understandable and implementable. He also told the committee that FBR has clarified on a number of occasions and clarifies again through this forum that no consumer item has been additionally taxed except sugar which has gone from 11 % tax to 17 % tax. The committee members also observed that many stores have been charging sales tax other than the tagged prices on products. The officials told the meeting that an SRO is being drafted and will be issued to all the clothing markets to include the tax in the tagged price and no money can be overcharged after going to counters. The committee also discussed the issues faced by public in tax returns filing, mobile phone registration, and taxation in ex-FATA among other issues.