ISLAMABAD – The government has been advised by the Economic Advisory Council to take measures to tax the agriculture income and proposed setting up of a holding company to revive the eight loss making and upgrading the five profitable public sector enterprises.
The meeting was held under the Chairmanship of Minister for Finance Dr Abdul Hafeez Shaikh, and attended by Dr Hafiz A Pasha, Shaukat Tarin, Dr Ijaz Nabi, Jahangir Khan Tarin, Salim Raza, Farooq Rahmatullah, Ali Habib, Nasim Beg, Shahnaz Wazir Ali, Farid Rehman, Hassan Ali Chaniho, Arshad
Zuberi, deputy chairman planning commission, governor State Bank of Pakistan and other senior officials.
An official source said the council also expressed serious concerns that the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) may not be able to even achieve the revised revenue collection target of Rs 1604 billion for the current fiscal year. He said EAC was of the view that revenue collection would remain around Rs 1530 to Rs 1535 billion.
They suggested that the government should take administrative measures to increase the revenue collection by bringing agriculture income into the tax net, adding that provinces were already empowered to collect tax from agricultural sector and should be asked to issue notices to rich landlords.
On the issue of taxation of agriculture sector, the source said it was proposed that FBR should explore the actual potential of taxation of the agricultural sector and should obtain a list of possible taxpayers from the provinces.
