PRIME Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi has ordered the Federal Bureau of Revenue to simplify income tax returns for individual taxpayers and ensure that it is restricted to one page.

This is, indeed, heartening news as simplified tax returns forms were a long-standing demand of the people. I have wondered many times why the authorities concerned — read FBR — have ignored the fact that Pakistan has a very low literacy rate and those considered literate are actually illiterate when it comes to filling in and filing the complex IT returns and wealth statements. Furthermore, the expenditure details required to be provided cannot be provided accurately unless every taxpayer employs a competent accountant.

As a senior citizen who has filed his tax returns diligently for almost half a century, it is my humble opinion that the FBR should primarily be more interested in the amount of tax collected and not the number of returns filed, even from those who have no taxable income worth the name. Practically, it is impossible to vet all IT returns if submitted by all and sundry as per income tax rules.

A simple way of broadening the tax net and ensuring all pay equitably is if the CNIC number is also made the National Tax Number. Thereafter, there will be no place to hide

The other measures can be: taxable income and tax rates should be specified, the assessees be asked to calculate and deposit tax in specified bank branches. The tax rate should be reduced as an incentive.

M. Akram Niazi

Rawalpindi

Published in Dawn, February 20th, 2018