ISLAMABAD: Minister for Finance and Revenue Dr Shamshad Akhtar on Wednesday directed Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) to make all possible efforts to achieve the revenue collection target for the current fiscal year.

The directive came from Ms Akhtar during a briefing on the FBR revenue performance as it is faced with massive shortfalls in revenue collection in FY18.

An official statement issued after the meeting said the minister stressed upon improving tax-to-GDP ratio of the country to fund development projects. She also sought feedback from the FBR Chief Tariq Mehmood Pasha about the impact of different amnesty schemes and tax rebates offered by the previous government on the revenue collection targets.

She also emphasised on the need for upgradation of the tax system through the use of technology.

The minister during the meeting discussed the overall macroeconomic condition of the country and FBR’s revenue collection operations.

Mr Pasha gave a detailed briefing on the PML-N government performance in the last five years in terms of measures taken at FBR level. He also talked about the measures so far being taken by his organisation to achieve collection targets, the major steps taken to facilitate the tax payers and the key achievements during the five year period.

The chairman informed the minister that the tax-to-GDP ratio has increased from 8.7pc in 2012-13 to 12.4pc in 2017-18. He told that the number of tax-return filers has almost doubled to 1.4 million till 2017-18 and SROs worth Rs300 billion have been eliminated as a major reform to broaden the tax system.

He also said that for the facilitation of tax payers, their CNIC numbers have been adopted as the National Tax Number and the number of tax slabs has been reduced to four from seven. He also mentioned the queue management system for the sales tax refund and the direct transfer of sales tax refunds into tax-payer’s accounts as major reforms to upgrade the system.

Published in Dawn, June 7th, 2018