Government to document real estate industry for reducing fiscal deficit
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ISLAMABAD: (APP) Adviser to the Prime Minister on Revenue Haroon Akhtar has said the government is determined to document Real Estate industry ensuring them to pay their due in taxes for strengthening national economy and reduce deficit.
He said the government has held meeting with representatives of Real Estate associations in cordial atmosphere and we hope the DC value mechanism for property prices evaluation would be replaced with other workable modalities.
Talking to a private news channel, he said the associations had three major concerns, which were discussed. Firstly they are not ready to accept an evaluator even if it is a third-party evaluator and to come under its purview.
Their second concern was if converted from DC rate to fair market value, it may cause harmful effects for business community.
The third issue was if rate is raised from DC rate then what would be status of past transactions made before July 1st.
He said consensus was developed in the meeting to form a 13 member committee from real estate association to evaluate fair market price and DC rate, and Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) would work from the government side on evaluation.
The said committee and FBR are given deadline of Wednesday to complete their work, he said. The evaluation of both the sides would be compared and if major difference was found, it would be settled with consensus according to fair market value.
He said the government was making sincere efforts to bring reforms in this sector as he hoped that price evaluation matter would be sorted out by the end of this month as per deadline given by the Prime Minister and Finance Minister Muhammad Ishaq Dar.
The adviser said that people were investing in the sector and it was not about just buying and selling of plots rather it was a complete sector of housing development as 32 other industries also associated to this business.
He said we had been doing the practice for three years to convert the black money into white through documentation of industrial sector and it cannot be done overnight.
Haroon Akhtar said to resolve the matter of transactions made before July 1st this year, there is a suggestion to apply a fix rate and it would be considered by the government.
He said many incentives had been given by the government to industrial sector for an overall progress in the country.
