ISLAMABAD, May 13: Only 55,111 taxpayers out of a total 518,384 non-salary taxpayers were showing an annual income of more than Rs250,000, which showed that most of the taxpayers have understated their income in the tax returns filed this year. Well-placed sources told Dawn on Friday that the analysis of the 518,384 income tax returns for the tax year 2004 filed with the income tax department across the country showed that most of the taxpayers understated their income to an average of around 25,000 per month.

The income tax-to-GDP ratio stood at around 3 per cent, which was the lowest in the region.

Of these total returns, only 576 taxpayers, which stood at only 0.11 per cent of the total taxpayers across the country have declared their income more than Rs5 million in their tax returns filed for the same period emphasizing the need for bringing more taxpayers in this category to realize more revenue.

This means that the remaining 48,175 taxpayers out of 55,111 taxpayers have shown their income in the range of Rs250,000 to Rs1 million. While 7,512 taxpayers have shown their income in the range of Rs1 million to Rs5 million, respectively.

These 55,111 taxpayers, which showed annual income of more than Rs250,000 had also included incomes from property, business and interest in their returns. This showed that most of these people, who live in posh localities across the country do pay very high residential utility bills, children education bills, vehicles expenses, rent of accommodation, house hold and personnel expenses. And all this they cannot do within a monthly income of around Rs25,000 per month.

The analysis was carried out of income tax returns captured at Centralized Data Entry Centre (DEC), Islamabad established last year by the CBR. The total number of income tax returns captured at DEC stood at 1,092, 027. This included-424,963 salary tax returns and 518,384 non-salary tax returns.

According to further analysis of the data, 463,273 taxpayers out of a total 518,384 non-salary taxpayers have shown their income below Rs250,000 across the country, which stood at 89.368 pre cent of the total income tax returns filers this year.

Of these 463,273 taxpayers, 28,911 have declared their annual income at Rs50,000 in the tax returns filed this year; 225,736 taxpayers between Rs50,001-Rs100,000; 141,929 taxpayers between Rs100,001-Rs150,000; 45,288 taxpayers between Rs150,001—Rs200,000; 21,409 taxpayers between Rs200, 001—Rs2,50,000, respectively.

Similarly, the analysis of the salary class returns showed that only 51, 019 salary taxpayers out of the total 424,963 taxpayers have declared their income in the tax returns filed this year more than Rs300,000.

Of the 51,019 taxpayers, only 14,043 salary taxpayers have shown their income more than Rs500,000, which indicated that the remaining taxpayers declared their income in the range of Rs300,000 to Rs500,000.

Further analysis showed that around 288,718 out of total 424,963 salary taxpayers have shown their income up to Rs200,000 in their tax returns filed with income tax department this year, which constituted around 67.94 per cent share of the total salary taxpayers. While 85,226 taxpayers have declared their income in the tax returns in the range of Rs200,000 to Rs300,000.

Although the government has declared this year as an year of broadening of tax base and realization of more revenue from the potential taxpayers. In case of effective audit of these taxpayers, it was expected that the current revenue would increase manifold.