LAHORE: The Punjab government’s tax receipts from five provincial revenue collection departments have witnessed a 30 per cent decline during financial year 2014-15 as the government revised downwards its budgetary estimates from Rs164,680.24 million (Rs164.68 billion) to Rs114,249.69 million (Rs114.24 billion) due to multiple factors.

However, the government has again set an ‘ambitious’ target of Rs160,591.11 million for current fiscal 2015-16, claiming it expects to increase its tax collection by 40.6pc above the revised estimates.

Official figures available with Dawn show that the budgetary estimates for the Punjab Revenue Authority had been revised from Rs95,000 million to Rs49,369.40 million in 2014-15 after the authority failed to collect sales tax on 17 services.

Similarly, the performance of the Excise and Taxation department in terms of collection of tax from professions, traders and callings remained discouraging as against the budgetary estimates of Rs783.36m, the government revised it to Rs720m.

PRA, E&T, BoR fail to achieve certain targets, transport and energy depts succeed

The department also could not collect receipts under motor vehicle tax during the previous fiscal which pushed the government to revise the budgetary estimates from Rs11,255.34m to Rs9,733.5m.

The tax on farm houses and luxury houses also remained a question mark on the performance of E&T officials who failed to achieve the target of Rs15m and Rs500m, respectively and the government eventually revised downwards both estimates up to Rs0.29m and Rs14m correspondingly.

The E&T also faced difficulties in collecting Rs713.6m budgetary estimates for 2014-15 which were revised to Rs548m.

Similarly, the Board of Revenue though managed to achieve Rs39,789.78m budgetary estimates for 2014-15 in five categories, it failed to meet targets in categories of agriculture income tax (revised down from Rs2,018.94m to Rs1,000m), registration (from Rs1,612.27m to Rs778m) and capital value tax (from Rs5,432.63m to Rs 4,649m).

Interestingly, the BoR collected more tax in land revenue and stamps categories and surpassed budgetary estimates 2014-15 from Rs11,788.68m to Rs12,289.52m and Rs18,937.26m to Rs21,073.26m, respectively.

Similarly, the E&T department collected more tax under urban immoveable property tax and provincial excise categories as their budgetary receipts increased from Rs7,750m to Rs7,950m and Rs1,782.61m to Rs1,783m, respectively during 2014-15.

On the other hand, the transport department achieved Rs550m target under the motor vehicles fitness certificate and permit fee and energy department achieved Rs6,540m figure under electricity duty.

Sources in the Punjab government told Dawn that the departments could not achieve desired targets apparently because of slow implementation of tax reforms, revenue leakages and corruption in official ranks.

They said the government again had set an ambitious tax collection target for current fiscal which was even a bit less than 2014-15.

Sources said the tax collection was expected to increase from Rs114,249.69m revised budget estimates of 2014-15 as the government was considering expanding scope of different taxes, improving collection efficiency along with initiatives of e-stamping, automation of property tax record through GIS mapping of properties, plugging of revenue leakages through introduction of technology and implementing other administrative measures.

Published in Dawn, July 13th, 2015

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