PESHAWAR: Tobacco Dealers Association Khyber Pakhtunkhwa has rejected advanced income tax in tobacco growing areas and asked the government to withdraw the decision otherwise the dealers will start agitation after Eidul Fitr.

Speaking at a news conference at the Peshawar Press Club on Wednesday, the association’s vice president Mohammad Yaqoob Khan said Pakistan Tobacco Board had imposed five per cent advanced income tax which was sheer injustice with both the farmers and dealers.

Flanked by the association’s general secretary Bakht Sher, zonal president Arsala Khan and others, he said the dealers were already paying about Rs1 billion in taxes annually to the federal government, but it was planning to impose new taxes.

The dealers, he said were paying federal and development cess to both the federal and provincial governments and another five per cent tax was imposed on movement of tobacco consignments.

“We will not pay the five per cent tax on movement of tobacco in the tobacco growing areas like Swabi, Nowshera, Mardan and Charsadda,” he said. He said the Pakistan Tobacco Board should not create problems for the farmers and dealers.

The law about advanced income tax, he said had not been approved by the assembly and if the government tried to make it a law then the tobacco growers and dealers would be forced to come to the streets.

The government, he said was not giving alternative incentives to farmers and imposing new taxes on them for the past 13 years.

Bakht Sher said the successive governments had never raised voice for rights of the growers and dealers of tobacco rather created problems for them.

He said in the past the people of Gadoon Amazai used to grow poppy but they stopped the cultivation under an agreement with the government that hundreds of industrial units would be established in the Gandap area of Swabi as a tax-free zone to facilitate the locals.

He said now the industrialists had also shifted from the area which caused unemployment on large scale. “We will have the only option to reconsider cultivation of poppy on our agriculture land if the government failed to accept our demands,” he said.

Published in Dawn, June 8th, 2017