LAHORE: Apparently struggling to achieve the Rs72 billion target set for this fiscal year, the Punjab Revenue Authority (PRA) claims to have collected Rs6.102bn sales tax on services in the first 29 days of April 2016, terming it the highest-ever collection in a single month.

This is the highest-ever tax collection achievement in a single month by any provincial or sub-national revenue authority in Pakistan, a statement released by PRA claimed.

Official statistics available with Dawn show that the PRA’s overall revenue grew 37pc to Rs47.773bn in the first 10 months of 2015-16, against the collection of Rs34.870bn in the corresponding period of 2014-15.

Revenue collection in­­creased 33pc from Rs4bn in April 2015 to Rs6.102bn in April 2016.

Of the total collection during July-April 2015-16, Rs35.19bn was collected from the non-telecom and Rs12.58bn from the telecom sectors.

Last year, Rs21.42bn was collected from the non-telecom sector and Rs13.44bn from the telecom sector during the same period.

“This is also a reflection of the change in fortunes of the PRA, which had faced significant challenges to its existence only a few months ago. Through sheer resilience, it has demonstrated a record-breaking growth of 64 per cent over the past 10 months in all service sectors except the telecom,” it added.

In the case of telecom sector, there is a negative growth trend of 6pc in the period under review.

However, informed sources in the PRA said that the revenue collection was still behind the target by approximately Rs13bn for the period under review due to multiple reasons.

A couple of months back, 11 sectors out of 59 were asked to pay 2-10pc sales tax instead of 16pc, but majority of them have yet not complied with due to certain political influences and administrative weaknesses of the authority.

For example, cable operators, toll manufacturers, property dealers and unauthorised car dealers seem to have shown the most defiance to the Punjab Revenue Authority, which is itself struggling with internal capacity issues such as the authority’s formation and weak enforcement in certain sectors.

Sources further said that the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) is not transferring Rs6.28bn in relation to the cross-adjustment of input tax which the latter held for about 33 months.

A Memorandum of Understanding was signed last year in June for the transfer of Rs15bn to Punjab, they added.

Published in Dawn, April 30th, 2016