RAWALPINDI, Sept 7: Traders in cantonment areas have criticised the Rawalpindi Cantonment Board (RCB) for asking over 20,000 shopkeepers to pay ‘board tax’ (identification board fee), saying it was first of its kind in the taxation history of the country.

The authorities have served notices on all traders in the cantonment areas including Sadder asking them to pay tax for displaying identification board on their shops. However, the shopkeepers argue that tax cannot be imposed on identification marks of business centres.

“Why should we pay board tax? We are not displaying billboards for which we can pay tax. Why the cantonment authorities are imposing board tax on us for the first time? We would move the court against the decision,” general-secretary Markazi Anjuman-i-Tajiran Rawalpindi Cantonment Mohammed Zafar Qadri told Dawn on Sunday.

He accused the RCB authorities of stoking public anger against the new government in an attempt to destabilise it, because the cantonment areas fall in the jurisdiction of the federal government.

Mr Qadri said under the 1924 Act, the identification boards in front of shops were exempted from any kind of tax, adding the cantonment authorities should first explain as under which law the shopkeepers were being forced to pay the board tax.

“We don’t want to take to the streets and paralyze normal life and business activities. We are tired of protest but the RCB authorities compel us to disrupt normal life in order to destabilise the government,” he remarked.

He said a delegation of traders would meet the cantonment authorities on Monday to express their reservations over the move. He said they would devise their future strategy in case the RCB ignored their point of view.

It may be noted that there is a difference between the sign board tax and board tax, as the former falls under the tax net while the latter is an identification sign of a shop or an organisation.