LAHORE: Punjab Finance Minister Dr Ayesha Ghaus Pasha Thursday said that the budget for the fiscal year 2018-19 would be tax-free but the expansion of the tax net would remain the agenda of the provincial government, besides focusing on social sector development projects.
Chairing the maiden meeting of the resource mobilisation committee for the fiscal year 2018-19 budget, the minister said the budget would also focus on the development of Punjab and selection of development projects would be made on the output of the projects and facilitate agriculture and export promotion.
“The Punjab government focused on comprehensive taxation reforms for the collection of tax and non-tax revenue in order to increase the indigenous resources of the province,” said the minister.
Dr Ayesha Ghaus said the government was working to introduce online tax collection procedures in order to minimize tax evasion and to increase the direct interaction with the taxpayers. “An application is being created to bring all tax collection on a single platform to facilitate the taxpayers and end the hassle of various offices to pay the taxes,” the minister told and added that to implement it, the Punjab government had recently launched a business registration portal through which all business registration processes would be completed without visiting any government office.
The minister informed the meeting that all revenue collection agencies of Punjab were achieving their tax collection targets as a result of the reforms introduced through the recommendations of the resource mobilisation committee. “Besides, it has also been promoting a positive tax culture in Punjab,” she added.
The meeting was co-chaired by Provincial Minister for Commerce and Industry Sheikh Alaudin and attended by Members Provincial Assembly (MPAs) Haji Ilyas Insari, Abdul Rauf Mughal and Nadia Aziz, Livestock Secretary Naseem Sadiq, Punjab Revenue Authority (PRA) Chairman Raheel Ahmed Siddique, Excise and Taxation DG Akram Ashraf Gondal, Budget Additional Secretary Rana Ubaid, Resources Deputy Secretary Faiqa and other officials of the provincial departments concerned.
Speaking at the occasion, Sheikh Alaudin stressed the need of collection of vehicle tokens locally and highlighted the reduction in revenue collection on luxury vehicles. He suggested the tax should be levied on manufacturers invoice and not on that of the dealers to stop the revenue leakages.
The PRA and Excise and Taxation departments updated the meeting on revenue collection and presented their proposals for the upcoming fiscal year. Besides, the representatives of other departments presented the status of their non-tax revenue collection.
Dr Ayesha Ghaus then instructed the departments to eradicate the irrelevant non-tax revenue collections. The meeting decided to finalise the implementable revenue mobilisation proposal for the upcoming budget in the next meeting.
