PESHAWAR: Sarhad Chamber of Commerce and Industry president Faiz Mohammad Faizi had urged Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) to improve its performance by expanding taxpayers net and facilitating the tax filers.

He was addressing a seminar here on Wednesday. The seminar was organised jointly by Sarhad Chamber of Commerce and Industry in collaboration with Small and Medium Enterprises (Smeda).

The event was meant to create awareness among businessmen about changes in the income tax and sale tax laws and filling of tax returns.

The SCCI chief said that only 0.6 million people of the 210 million population of the country were filers. He said that culture of tax payment needed to be improved to bring economic stability in the country and enhance revenue base. He added that public welfare schemes were also run through the tax money in the country.

Smeda provincial chief Rashid Aman, Smeda assistant manager legal service, Mohammad Kamran, Kashif Saigal, the chamber executive body members, Minhajuddin, Ihsanullah, Altaf Baig, Arshad Siddique, Pervez Khan Khattak, Abidullah Khan Yousafzai, Arshad Iqbal, Saddar Gul and traders attended the seminar and shared their views with each other.

Faiz Mohammad appreciated Smeda for organising the awareness session on the important issue, saying it would be helpful and supportive for the business community to understand the new tax reforms. He hoped that Smeda would hold such awareness sessions in future as well to make the businesses environment favourable for the community.

On the occasion, Smeda consultant Kashif Saigal through his multi-media presentation briefed the participations of the event in details about tax background, its importance, procedure and ratio of payment.

The official said that it would be impossible to evade tax in coming days owing to advent of modern technology. He said that the business community should know significance of the tax, payment of taxes and also prepare themselves for future challenges in that regard.

The speakers stressed the need for tax payment to avoid legal action. They said that all the public welfare schemes could be run through the taxes so the culture pf paying taxes should be developed.

Published in Dawn, March 21st, 2019