Amid COVID-19, FBR achieves revised tax collection target for 2019-20

KARACHI: Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) on Tuesday announced that it has successfully achieved a revised target of tax collection for the fiscal year 2019-20 amid COVID-19 pandemic, ARY NEWS reported.

The FBR spokesman said that the revised estimate of tax collection for the outgoing fiscal year was set at Rs 3,907 billion. “We have collected Rs 3,957 billion in terms of taxes at the end of the fiscal year,” he said.

“Overall tax collection is Rs50 billion more than the estimated targets,” he said.

The spokesman said that they had collected Rs 411 billion in the last month of the year, June 2020, which is more than the set target of Rs 398 billion.

The FBR official said that the tax collection body crossed the Rs400 billion mark in terms of gross revenue collection for the first time. “Such a collection during a month even at the time of the pandemic is an applaudable act,” he said.

He said that the COVID-19 has claimed the lives of over 30 employees of the FBR, but they still continued their services despite the looming threats.

It is pertinent to mention here that the announcement of achieving tax collection targets from the FBR came a day after Chief Minister Sindh Syed Murad Ali Shah on Monday refused to collect taxes for the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) under Income Tax Ordinance 2001.

Shedding light on the matter, Secretary Sindh Excise department Abdul Haleem Shaikh said that they used to collect these taxes voluntarily to submit it with the federal authorities. He, however, said that constitutionally, they were not bound to collect it.

We will not be receiving this tax after fresh directives from the chief minister Sindh, he said.