ISLAMABAD, June 30: The Central Board of Revenue is finding it difficult to meet the revised target of Rs590 billion for the outgoing fiscal year and has delayed the announcement of revenue collection figures till Friday.

Informed source told Dawn on Thursday that tax officials were negotiating with major taxpayers like Wapda, OGDC, PTCL, SNGPL and some others for collecting advance taxes under the head of income tax and sales tax from them for reaching the target, which would be adjusted against their taxation liabilities in the next fiscal year.

The sources said that for the first time under the present regime, the CBR did not announce revenue collection figures on the last day of the outgoing fiscal year. Last year Prime Minister and then Finance Minister Shaukat Aziz announced the revenue figures in a press conference on June 30.

The sources said that one of the reasons for delaying was to collect advance taxes as the revenue collection on June 30 was short of the target.

When contacted CBR official spokesman Habib Fakhruddin said that the revenue collection figures would be announced on Friday (today). He said that banks were open till 10:00p.m. and it took some time to gather and compile the information.

According to these sources, the income tax officials had reportedly collected around Rs3 billion as advance tax from OGDC for reaching the budgetary target of Rs181.7 billion set for the income tax for the outgoing fiscal year.

Elaborating further, the sources said the CBR had also revised downwards the annual target of sales tax following the shortfall registered in the collection of sales tax at domestic stage during the 11 months of outgoing fiscal year.

This shortfall would be adjusted by the increase made in the collection of customs duty following the massive increase of imports and some growth registered in the collection of central excise duty during the period under review.

Moreover, the CBR had also announced amnesty schemes in the budget by exempting the levy of additional tax and penalty on principal tax so that to encourage taxpayers to deposit their sales tax pending for the last many years.

A similar amnesty scheme was also announced for the warehousing goods to raise additional revenue on the removing of goods at payment of duty and taxes during June 2005. The CBR had directed all collector of customs to clear all consignments lying at ports to raise maximum revenue to achieve the annual target, added the sources.