Envisaging protection of common people, the government through Budget 2019-20 has provided tax relief on various daily-use essential products including medicines, food, and beverages as well as their inputs, a senior official of Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) said on Thursday.
He further said that tax relief and exemptions have been provided on various health sector commodities including lifesaving medicines and medical equipment.
“The government exempted Custom Duty (CD) on 18 medical products and their inputs, health and medical units, medicines of rare disease; mobile health units and free operation theaters,” the official added.
He said that an exemption was added for duties on raw material for hemodialyzers used by kidney patients to facilitate kidney patients.
In addition, the official said, tax relief has also been provided for home appliances and on different edibles.
In order to tap the true potential of the tourism industry, the government had also given a tax relaxation on various products used by the industry as it had decreased duty from 11% to 8% on pre-fabricated structures used for building hotels.
He said the government has also incentivized the local industry for industrial growth and promotion of country’s exports and had given exemptions on more than 1650 raw materials and industrial inputs for supporting the local industries.
The government has reduced the duties on different sectors including printing paper industry, wood, and furniture, LED panel manufacturing, liquid food industry, Fabric, machinery part of textile industry, home appliance and Yarn industries sectors. However, duties on luxury and non-essential items had been enhanced as part of a strategy to discourage imports of such products, he added.
Common man like Amir Ata Bhai
Exactly. Like ProPTI..
Cooking oil, sugar, milk etc., are not the products consumed by a common man, therefore they increase taxes on these items.
These are most luxurious items, or will be soon?