Islamabad: Officials of the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) recently held a meeting to discuss a series of additional tax measures proposed for inclusion in the government’s mini-budget announcement, a news source reported.
Both sides discussed the potential revenue measures. Most of the measures discussed pertained to sales tax. Meanwhile, the FBR authorities resisted the IMF’s demand for holding the mini-budget announcement. On the other hand, they also sought a cut of PKR 800 billion for the tax collection target. However, the IMF officials declined any further ease in the targets unless Pakistan took additional tax measures. The authority has already lowered the target to PKR 5.238 trillion.
The Ministry of Finance has proposed four
key principles to work out the revenue measures. Pakistan currently needs a
mini-budget of worth PKR 200 billion for achieving the said revised tax
collection target.
As per sources, due to a short time remaining before the end of the current fiscal year, FBR’s major revenue spinner comes down to raising the General Sales Tax (GST) from 17% to 18%. They added that this rate was highly inflationary and politically risky. FBR has yet to consider this proposal.
