PESHAWAR: The business community has urged the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) to bring non-tax filers into the tax net to help reduce burden on regular taxpayers.

The demand was made by United Business Group leader and former senator Ilyas Ahmed Bilour, in a statement issued here on Saturday.

He said the initiative of expanding the tax net would help broaden the tax base and would yield very positive results.

Mr Bilour said there were only 900,000 taxpayers in the country while the agriculture and real estate sectors were out of the tax net, adding with expansion of the net the burden on the existing taxpayers could be reduced.

Mr Bilour, who is also a senior leader of Awami National Party, said bringing the non-tax filers identified by the FBR into the tax net would help bridge the fiscal gap and enhance development expenditures for socio-economic uplift. He said the national economy was facing alarming situation mainly due to depreciation of Pakistani rupee.

He appreciated FBR Chairman Shabbar Zaidi’s stance to avoid freezing bank accounts, conducting raids at workplaces and offices of the businessmen for tax collection and said such decisions would always be lauded. He said the newly-appointed FBR chief was a charted accountant and economist who knew problems of the business community very well.

Published in Dawn, May 19th, 2019