The Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) has erased evidence of its number-fudging by removing the net tax collection figures of the last fiscal year from its website. The FBR tax revenue figures for the month of June, stated to be Rs 277.6 billion in the fourth quarter, were deleted from the FBR tax collection list, leaving behind an erroneous total figure of Rs 1.59 trillion. FBR Chairman Salman Siddique had announced the erroneous figures in a hastily called press conference on June 30, claiming that the board had achieved the tax revenue target of Rs 1.588 trillion. The controversy on the misreporting of tax figures appeared after the reconciliation of provisional tax collection data received from regional and large taxpayer units. It came to the notice of the Finance Ministry that the final tax collection by the FBR was Rs 1.550 trillion instead of Rs 1.59 trillion.
