MULTAN: The Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) is going to introduce a new Sales Tax General Order to address the sales tax concerns.

This was stated by FBR Chairman Tariq Bajwa while speaking to members of the Multan Chamber of Commerce and Industry.

Mr Bajwa said that the formation of tax reforms commission, which would finalise tax ratios, determine various duties and decide all types of tax-related matters, would be announced after the settlement of dust on the political scene.

He said that there was a need to increase the tax-to-GDP ratio as 57.5 per cent of the taxes collected by the centre were distributed among provinces.

Know more: FBR to publish active taxpayers list fortnightly

“We are, however, making efforts to reduce the tax ratio and bring the non-taxpayers to the tax net, and so far 35,000 new tax payers have been identified since July 1,” he said.

He said now taxpayers would enjoy benefits in terms of travelling abroad and purchase of property and vehicles.

“A taxpayer is our client and deserves to be honoured and should be treated on priority basis,” he said.

He said that the government has distributed certificates among high taxpayers while a tax paper on the pattern of National Identity Card would be issued through National Database and Registration Authority to high taxpayers who would be able to enjoy various facilitations specified for them.

He said that Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority (Pemra), while issuing licences makes it binding upon TV channels to allocate 10pc of their time for public messages, and now this time would be utilised for encouraging people to pay taxes and discuss tax-related issues.

He said that the date for tax returns could be extended due to political and flood situation. However, so far Sept 30 is the last date for submission of tax returns.

He said that due to excessive smuggling of Chinese products, industrial and business sectors of the country were facing hardships while the government had also imposed tax on some Chinese products to support the local manufacturers as they are unable to meet Chinese products in quality and price.

He directed the authorities concerned to arrange suspension of court stay order in Rs60 billion tax-evasion case by a private firm, Fatima Enterprise Limited, and submit a report to him in this regard.

Earlier, inaugurating the new building of Model Customs Collectorate at Multan, Mr Bajwa said that due to prevailing situation on Iran and Afghanistan borders, it was not possible to stop smuggling at borders.

“We share 1,000km long border with Afghanistan and 500km with Iran and it was not possible to stop smuggling at borders. So there was a need that custom anti-smuggling and custom intelligence should become more efficient to stop smuggling,” he said.

He said that customs was playing an important role in tax collection and its share in total tax collection was 10pc while its share in import level revenue was 40pc.

Published in Dawn, September 10th , 2014