Faced with a daunting task of mobilising additional revenue resources in the absence of foreign inflows, the government has decided to take a holistic view of its tax collection target measures and machinery by forming five groups to give recommendations on refining the tax estimates. Decision has been taken to disaggregate the data into sectors, regions and month wise targets for every sector at the field offices level for the current fiscal year.
This decision was made at a meeting of the Tax Reform Coordination Group (TRCG) chaired by Finance Minister Hafeez Shaikh on Friday to discuss the revenue collection strategy for the next fiscal year.
The minister constituted five working groups for improving the tax collection machinery’s performance including revenue performance group, special initiatives group, institutional improvements group, outreach group and tax policy group for improving the performance of Federal Board of Revenue (FBR). The Revenue Performance Group will focus on developing and refining the tax estimates for FY 11-12 by disaggregating the data into sectors, regions and months. Specific estimates will be set for each field office. The Group will develop a system for enforcement and review of these estimates. The Special Initiatives Group will focus on developing action plans for expanding the income tax base, sales tax incentive scheme and other special initiatives to be taken by FBR. The issue of Customs valuations and Afghan Transit Trade will also be discussed in this group.
Institutional Improvements Group will focus on technology issues, human resource issues, monitor refunds and improving the transparency in FBR while the Tax Policy Group would develop policies for the longer term. The Outreach Group will interact with the taxpayers, media, organizations such as NADRA and Planning Commission for any research help, interact with the National Assembly and provincial assembly and provincial governments to project the work being done by FBR and get input of different stakeholders.
The FBR has presented a strategic plan for revenue collection in FY11-12. FBR Chairman Salman Siddique presented the collection details of FY 10-11 and the provisional revenue figures of Rs105 billion for the month of July 2011, which shows a healthy growth of 36 per cent compared to last year’s collection same month. The first meeting of revenue performance group will be held on Wednesday, August 17, 2011 in an effort to develop estimates within a week’s time. All the other groups will meet before Eid. A day long meeting will be held after Eid in which these Groups will present their reports to the Finance Minister.
The meeting was attended by the Planning Commission Deputy Chairman, Nadeem ul Haq, FBR Chairman Salman Siddique, Secretary Finance Waqar Masood, National Database and Registration Authority (NADRA) Chairman Tariq Malik, Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan (SECP) Chairman Muhammad Ali and officials of the Finance Ministry and FBR. Amongst members of TRCG, Abdullah Yousuf, Syed Shabbar Zaidi, Arshad Zuberi, Muhammad Arshad Chaudhary, Irfan Nadeem, Ali Jameel, Bashir Ali Mohammad attended the meeting.