The federal government is reportedly planning to impose Withholding Tax (WHT) on locally produced automobiles on the basis of invoice price instead of engine capacity in the upcoming budget.
In connection with such reports, the Pakistan Automotive Manufacturers Association (PAMA) has warned of the detrimental consequences of such a move on the already struggling auto industry.
In a letter to the Chairman Federal Board of Revenue (FBR), which is available with ProPakistani, PAMA has stated that changing the basis of WHT will negatively impact the sales of locally-made vehicles.
PAMA has requested the FBR not to proceed with this proposal as it will increase the amount of WHT on locally-made vehicles and inevitably raise their retail prices. PAMA has also requested to reduce the current engine-based WHT on vehicles.
PAMA has also noted that barring a decline during the COVID-19 years of 2019-20 and 2020-21, the auto industry started to revive during 2021-22 and nosedived massively again in 2022-23 due to the import restrictions.
Several PAMA members are incurring losses worth billions of rupees due to such restrictions, skyrocketing inflation, and other macroeconomic maladies prevailing in the country, PAMA concluded.
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karna hay jo karlo. where does this tax money goes?
To the GHQ
Pakistanis get taxed alot but what happens to the money??
The lions share of our budget goes to defense expenditures, which has never been audited by public representatives. And such a huge defense budget of a nuclear armed country is mind boggling.
PDM Troika has destroyed the whole country… Shame.
WHT should be made illegal unless the FBR ensures 90% of it is returned in timely manner to those that pay excess taxes
Indus toyota met Shehbaz and Dar last week and boom a few days later such rumors start floating in market. People are getting quite a good return for their money (even though that money is still high) from cross overs such as Haval, Changan, Kia and Hyandai. Specially, Haval HEV has made a big dent in Toyota market where its price is almost half of fortuner and delivers more power, half the fuel consumption and tons of more features (people don’t even know half of the features of Haval). Same comparison can be made of these crossovers and Toyota Hilux which Hilux is becoming more expensive by just adding Rocco and GRX badges.
Toyota realized they could not compete with these new entrants on features and price so best way is to kick them out of competition by putting these crossovers(mostly 1500 and 2000 CC) in same tax bracket as fortuner/Hilux (2600 and 2800CC) by manipulating our old politicians that Indus Toyota will give contribution to PLMN in upcoming elections.
Same old tricks of Japanese manufacturers in Pakistan since last 30 years.