LAHORE, June 27: Some 20 tax defaulters have so far availed of the federal government’s amnesty scheme, which allows them to pay only the principal amount of sales tax and excise duty by June 30 to get the waiver of default surcharge and penalties in the Lahore region of the Collectorate of Sales Tax and Federal Excise.

“Though the response is not as good as it used to be in the previous years, the momentum is picking up,” Assistant Collector Recovery Sumair Tarrar told Dawn on Wednesday.

He said 20 or so defaulters have availed of the amnesty scheme and deposited around Rs6-7 million. He was hopeful that the momentum will pick up in the remaining three days with more people availing of the opportunity provided by the government to get the waiver of penalties and surcharge.

The federal government has announced tax relief, including waiver of default surcharge and penalties to the taxpayers in the budget for the next financial year.

In exercise of powers conferred by section 34 A of the Sales Tax Act, 1990, the government has exempted whole of the amount of default surcharge and penalties payable by a taxpayer “against whom an amount of sales tax is outstanding on account of any audit observation, audit report, show-cause notice or any adjudication order or who has failed to pay any amount of sales tax or claimed inadmissible input tax adjustment or refund due to any reason other than tax fraud, subject to the condition that the outstanding principal amount of sales tax is paid by June 30.”

The Lahore collectorate has already set up a recovery cell to assist those who want to avail the amnesty announced by the government.

In answer to a question as to how much did the Lahore collectorate hope to collect under the scheme, Mr Tarrar said it depends on the revenue target for a region. He, however, said the collectorate had recovered Rs40mn on the last day of the amnesty last year.