April 06, 2008	Sunday	Rabi-ul-Awwal 28, 1429

ISLAMABAD, April 5: The Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) has witnessed a shortfall of over Rs17 billion in revenue realisation in March 2008 over the same month last year raising fears of missing the annual target.

Official figures compiled by the FBR showed that in absolute term Rs92.6 billion were collected during the month under review against Rs110 billion target set for the month.

The total revenue collected during the July-March period of the current fiscal year stood at Rs678.9 billion as against the last year’s collection of Rs597 billion, indicating a growth of 13.5pc.

The FBR has not revealed the targets for the first nine months of the current fiscal year to determine the total shortfall recorded so far. However, the FBR will have to raise Rs346.1 billion revenue in the April-June period to reach the annual target of Rs1,025 billion, which is now seemed a far cry.

A tax official told Dawn that after repeated shortfall in revenue collections during the past few months, the tax burden has been shifted to the next months in order to avoid the ‘wrath’ of the new government.

This kind of arrangement has been made for the first time in the FBR history that tax targets have been revised repeatedly to portray a positive picture of the revenue generation, the official added.

The statistics showed that the payment of refund and rebate to taxpayers also declined by 13 per cent to Rs57.288 billion during July-March against Rs65.991 billion paid out during the same period last financial year.

Had the refunds and rebates were not withheld by the tax authorities the revenue realisation would have been much more behind the target.

The figures showed that payment of income tax refunds/rebate declined by 28 per cent, sales tax 31.7 per cent and customs 11.3 per cent during the first nine months of the current fiscal year over the same period last year.

The tax-wise break-up showed that income tax collection grew marginally by 8.4 per cent to Rs257.664 billion against Rs237.800 billion over the same period last year.

The sales tax collection was up by 17.3 per cent to Rs257.773 billion against Rs218.815 billion over the last year. The customs duty collection increased by 9.9 per cent to Rs101.878 billion against Rs92.660 billion over the same period last year.

And the collection of federal excise duty was up by 29.1 per cent to Rs61.592 billion against Rs47.721 billion over the same period last year.