ISLAMABAD – Pakistan and the visiting IMF review mission have agreed ondownward revision of FBR’s tax collection target.
According to a report, the said target has been reduced by Rs. 233 billionto bring it to Rs. 5,270 billion against the envisaged target of Rs. 5,503billion for 2019-20.
The report stated that against the demand of Rs. 300 billion in annualtarget from the FBR side, the IMF review mission pitched its projection atRs. 5,270 billion from Rs. 5,503 billion on the basis of their assumptionthat the import compression will continue haunting the FBR’s collection inmonths ahead of the current fiscal year.
“We had also requested to slash the FBR’s collection target as thecountry’s 50 percent revenues is collected at import stage,” said thereport quoting the official sources.
When asked further, the FBR official said, the collection of customs atimport stage increased to 17 or 18 percent while other taxes such as IncomeTax in the shape of withholding tax and General Sales Tax (GST) at importstage contributed to 30 to 32 percent. In totality, the overall collectionat the import stage went up from 40 to 50 percent.
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The FBR high-ups argued that Pakistani side did not press upon any requestfor further slashing the FBR’s revenue target as the picture about theability of collection would become clearer after December 2019.
So far, the FBR is facing a revenue shortfall of Rs. 163 billion in thefirst four months (July-Oct) period of the current fiscal year as therevenue collection body fetched Rs. 1,283.5 billion against the desiredtarget of Rs. 1,447 billion.
