LAHORE: The provincial revenue authorities of Punjab, Sindh and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa decided on Friday to apply uniform rate of tax on inter-city carriage of goods through oil tankers across provinces.

In a meeting held at the Punjab Revenue Authority headquarters, PRA Chairperson Dr Raheal Siddiqi, Advisor Tax Policy Sindh Revenue Board (SRB) Syed Mushtaq Kazmi and KP Revenue Authority (KPRA) DG Yusuf Afridi discussed the issue and took decision on uniformed rate of tax.

It was agreed to hold another meeting on Oct 10 to chalk out a collection mechanism of tax because critical data from the Federal Ministry of Petroleum was not received in time despite several reminders.

An official told Dawn that the three provinces agreed on applying an uniformed tax rate but a formula — whether the rate would be applied as per ad valorem (percentage specific) or specific rate per litre — would be devised later.

He said currently PRA, SRB and KPRA had separate rates of 16 per cent, 13pc, and 15pc respectively. However, the oil tanker owners were not paying the tax owing to the ‘intervention’ of the petroleum ministry which feared country-wide strike and pursed the provinces to hold the tax in abeyance.

The official said the collection mechanism of whether to collect tax on point of origin or point of destination would be decided in the next meeting.

Published in Dawn September 24th, 2016