fbr targets 1.05 million income tax returns in 2015

KARACHI: Desperate to widen the tax base in a country where less then one percent of the population pay taxes, the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) has set a target to collect 138,000 more returns during the tax year 2015, officials said on Friday. The FBR has fixed a target of 1.05 million income tax returns during the year due to higher tax rates on non-filers. The FBR last year received 0.912 million tax returns. A senior official at Directorate of Broadening of Tax Base (BTB) of FBR said the FBR was estimating over 100,000 new income tax returns to be filed by the taxpayers during tax year 2015. The return filing for tax year 2015 will be completed by December with the filing by corporate sector. The filing of income tax returns for the tax year 2014 has been increased after measures taken in the budget 2015/2016 and it has increased to 912,000. The total number is still low as 3.5 million registered taxpayers are in the country. The directorate has gathered details of transactions on which tax was paid during 2013/2014 for the purposes of bringing new taxpayers in the system. According to details, Rs19.75 billion was collected from 2.46 million commercial and 0.29 million industrial electricity consumers. Similarly, about Rs52 billion of taxes were collected through withholding mechanism from 136.5 million mobile phone and 5.6 million landline telephone subscribers. In the banking system the FBR recorded 30.5 million transactions including saving accounts, national saving schemes and cash withdrawals on which the tax authorities collected over Rs50 billion. The directorate so far issued 344,572 notices to defaulters. Around 72,000 persons filed returns and paid Rs485 million tax. Through those notices, the directorate created demand of Rs16.87 billion and recovered Rs6.42 billion. During the recovery process the tax authorities resorted to harsh measures in 2,326 cases, which included: freezing of 1,366 bank accounts; issued arrest warrant in 343 cases; attached 195 properties and impounded 422 vehicles.