The government is planning to introduce a national tax agency to save the taxpayers from the trouble of filing different tax returns at provincial and federal taxes separately.
Minister of State for Revenue, Hammad Azhar, announced the above on Wednesday at a Sustainable Development Policy Institute (SDPI) conference.
He further said that the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) is unable to collect the due taxes from the informal sector and also from some chains of formal sectors like plastic, steel, sugar, and so on. These chains also break at some points, which open up spaces for tax evasion.
“The government will grant autonomy to the FBR as part of long-term agenda after placing ongoing reforms for separating policy from the administration.”
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“We are going to use technology, integration of data from different avenues including 30 government agencies, separating tax policy from the administration for improving administration as tax policy measures had already exhausted through different measures in the past,” said the state minister.
He underlined that the country was witnessing an economic crisis while comparing the situation in 2013 with that in 2018. He argued that the foreign currency reserves were double the current account deficit in 2013, but now the situation has reversed.
While referring to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) program, he said that the government will take steps that would be in the interest of the country, no matter what the political cost is.
The minister also announced to bring reforms in the Pakistan Revenue Automation (Pvt.) Limited (PRAL) in the coming days along by introducing a parametric-based audit system. The taxpayers will no longer have to visit the tax offices, he said.
Via: The News
