April 19, 2008	Saturday	Rabi-us-Sani 12, 1429

ISLAMABAD, April 18: President Islamabad Chamber of Commerce and Industry (ICCI) Mohammad Ijaz Abbasi on Friday said the government should announce incentives for taxpayers to encourage other people come into the tax net.

In a meeting with Chairman Federal Board of Revenue Mohammad Abdullah Yousaf, the ICCI president said there should not be any discrimination between local and foreign investors and both should be given the same treatment and incentives.

He said new taxpayers should be exempted from audit for three years, GST on products and services be reduced from 15 per cent to 10 per cent, corporate tax be slashed to 30 per cent and monthly sales tax return forms be made simple to promote industrialisation.

Besides, he added, capital goods, which were not locally manufactured, and generators of all kinds should be allowed to be imported duty free and sales tax on energy saver bulbs be zero rated.

Addressing the business community, Abdullah Yousaf said there were about two million taxpayers in the country and this number needed to be increased.

He proposed that Islamabad should a model tax-payee city, so as to replicate this model in other cities to expand the tax base. He said the ratio of taxes had been gradually reduced which were high in the past.—APP