LAHORE, April 3: Only 30,000 retailers and wholesalers have filed sales tax returns and deposited Rs101 million this year as compared to 34,000 returns received by the Central Board of Revenue (CBR) with total tax amount of Rs112 million last year.

This was stated by CBR chairman Yousuf Abdullah during his meeting with traders at the regional tax office on Tuesday. He said the traders’ response to tax compliance had been extremely poor despite the fact that the government had accepted their own tax formula.

He said the amount deposited by traders as tax showed that their average turnover of sales was only Rs1,500 a day.

Mr Abdullah said tax collection in Pakistan had been lopsided. He said some sectors contributed greater taxes than their share in the GDP and others paid almost nothing at all.

The contribution of agriculture to GDP was 22 per cent, but the total tax collected from farmers was paltry one per cent of the total taxes collection. Manufacturing with 18 per cent share in GDP contributed 62 per cent to the total taxes.

He said tax collected from the services sector amounted to 27 per cent of the total collection while its share in GDP stood at 56 per cent. He said retailers and wholesalers, a sub-sector of the services sector, contributed three per cent to the taxes against their share of 16 per cent in GDP.

He said he was prepared to with traders for evolving a fair tax collection formula that would be made part of the new budget.