KARACHI, Aug 29: The Regional Tax Office (RTO), Karachi, has made elaborate arrangements to receive a record number of over one million income tax returns by September 30, as against 0.73 million last year.

These measures are being taken to achieve the revenue target of Rs1.225 trillion set by the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) for 2008-09 and to broaden tax base so that tax-to-GDP ratio could improve, which presently stands lowest in the region.

Member direct taxes Irfan Nadeem, during his recent visit to Karachi, chalked out details of the plan with the senior RTO officials and important decisions were also taken in this regard.

Talking to Dawn director general RTO Asrar Raouf said that in order to achieve the assigned target of receiving over one million returns the tax department will set up over 50 ‘tax facilitation kiosks’ from September 1, 2008.

He said all these kiosks will be established at prominent business centers of the city. Furthermore, two mobile tax facilitation units will also be made available in the field to collect and receive returns from taxpayers.

Giving details about the working of these kiosks and mobile units the DG said that the new National Tax Numbers (NTN) and claims of refunds will also be issued by these centers.

He further said that since the FBR has undergone automation on large scale and is on the way to a paperless working environment, the returns collected by tax facilitation centres and mobile units will be scanned to save the data. Mr Raouf said that the RTO will launch a campaign by holding seminars, workshops and corner meetings at important business centres with the assistance of trade bodies and chambers.

He further said that during this campaign the business community will be motivated to assist the income tax department to identify new taxpayers so as to broaden the tax base. Senior tax officials will hold meetings with businessmen and apprise them of the tax benefits offered in the new tax amnesty scheme and tax arrears settlement incentive scheme, 2008.

The director general RTO disclosed that according to a study Karachi has 1.59 million potential taxpayers whereas presently only 0.73 million taxpayers are filing returns, which means that 0.86 million are still out of tax net.

He said all these measures were being taken to broaden tax base so that tax-to-GDP ratio could improves from around 11 per cent to 15 per cent. He was optimistic that by the year 2016 the FBR would be able to collect Rs4 trillion in tax revenue.According to a study conducted by the RTO, out of a total population of around 14.5 million of the city about 6.69 million were unemployed females, 4.29 million teenagers, 0.34 million unemployed senior citizens, 0.75 million expatriates and one million are illegal immigrants.

The director general RTO disclosed that there were around 1.76 million current account holders and 2.49 million saving account holders out of which only 0.76m were registered as taxpayers.

Furthermore, he said that the power utility company, KESC, has 0.26 million commercial and 0.02 million industrial consumers out of which only 0.14 million commercial and 5,400 industrial units were registered taxpayers.

All these facts and figures, he said, strongly indicate that the real potential of taxpayers in the city had never been explored and the tax office would easily take the number of the registered persons from the present 0.73 million to 1.59 million if proper facilitation measures were taken.