ISLAMABAD, June 8: The government has reduced all duties and taxes on all smuggled prone items including cloth to an average 15 per cent from 50 per cent to discourage smuggling. Addressing a press conference here on Wednesday the chairman Central Board of Revenue (CBR) M. Abdullah Yousuf said that rationalization of duty structure on the smuggled prone items particularly the polyester cloth would result into legal imports.

He said the CBR eying to generate revenue from legal imports of these items. According to him, these items would no more be attractive for smugglers as their cost, through illegal channels, would increase.

Answering a question, the chairman said that annually around $1-2 billion worth cloth being smuggled to Pakistan. He said the cut in duty would reduce cloth price in the local market.

To another question, the chairman said for expansion of tax base particularly in the sales tax and income tax, it had been decided to constitute dedicated teams at collectorate and commissionerate level.

These teams, he said would go out in the field to collect information from different sources to identify those people who were not registered with the tax department and were not contributing any tax to the national kitty.

The chairman was confident of achieving Rs690 billion as, what he said, economy was growing.

Mr Abdullah said that around 90 per cent exporters of the five sectors — textile, carpet, leather, surgical and sports goods would get out of the sales tax net.

To a question, he said that levying of tax on property was a provincial subject. However, he said that tax officials would check the records of the provincial department to locate the actual potential of the people involved in the business.

Under the income tax ordinance, it was binding on all those people to file return with the income tax department who were involved in the transaction of 250 meter of land. The chairman admitted that the compliance in this area was very week over the years.

To another question, the chairman said that to protect local industry a provision has been included in the customs act to levy a direct regulatory duty on any product suspected to be imported at dumped price in the local market. Currently, National Tariff Commission (NTC) do the same after hearing of the complainant.