ISLAMABAD: Finance Minister Ishaq Dar has asked the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) to release pending sales tax refunds of 26,000 clients within three weeks.

Mr Dar gave the direction after chairing the meeting of Chief Commissioners of Inland Revenue Service (IRS) on Thursday.

The total pending refund cases stood at 36,000 of 26,000 clients.

As per the decision, the minister said the sales tax refunds of up to Rs500,000 should be cleared within three weeks and refunds of Rs500,000 to Rs1 million will be cleared by April 15 subject to verification and due process.

It has been observed that the FBR withheld refunds of small taxpayers while cleared those of influential businessmen.

The minister informed the commissioner that the country’s tax-to-GDP ratio is around 9 per cent, one of the lowest among tax-collecting countries.

“Our government has embarked on an ambitious programme of annual 1pc tax-to-GDP growth”, the minister informed the meeting.

Tax collection in first eight months of this fiscal year is Rs1.348 trillion compared to Rs1.145tr in the same period of last year, reflecting a growth of 17.7 per cent.

The minister said, “Taxpayers are our clients.

We must have a positive and facilitative attitude towards them”.

The government has been trying to bring more and more citizens to the tax net. One of the measures it took in this regard is the amnesty package announced on Jan 1, 2014.

Although the package expired on Feb 28 and response from the people towards availing it remained lukewarm, the government earlier this month extended the scheme until April 30.

Under the scheme, people who have NTNs but did not file returns during the last five years can now submit returns until April 30.