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The working class of Pakistan, of whose livelihood completely depends on the the salary they earn every month, the government has brought a little source of joy. As per the government’s announcement, the salaried class of Pakistan would not be audited by the government on tax.
The government has decided to select 45,000 new cases through a balloting for audit. Haroon Akhtar, who is the Special Assistant on Revenue to the Prime Minister, taxpayers who came under the final and presumptive tax regime will not be a part of the tax audit. This will be for the year 2016.
“The GHQ wants its personnel to be law-abiding citizens,” remarked Akhtar, who is also son of Ex-ISI Chief General Akhtar Abdul Rehman. As per him, the General Headquarter (GHQ) was working with the Federal Board of Revenue to bring the complete armed forces of Pakistan in the tax net.
The total cases pending on the audit are close to touching 1 million, which is a lot for outstanding cases that have not been tended to by the FBR. But on their end, they say that they do not have the capacity to manage so much material in the backlog. Now, its the FBR that needs to find a way to sort it out, be it through more work on less people or general hiring through the Commissions.
While the salaried class has been revealed of this burden, it is pertinent to add here that the youth of Pakistan is suffering from a strong wave of unemployment and joblessness, especially for the aspirants. Thus, recruitment in the FBR can also be a beneficial move, but the Supreme Court/Election Commission ban on hiring is also a burden on the process.
Haroon Akhtar then also talked about how the FBR only wanted work on sectors that needed to pay tax, rather than the ones that already do. Tribune says, “The business community asked us for amnesty, we gave them the amnesty scheme; they asked us for lowering tax rates, we did that; in some cases, we gave them even more relief than what they had asked for and the entire purpose of facilitating the business community was to foster business activities, promote growth and generate more revenues in the process,” Akhtar stated.
As per the PM aide, the tax process would be held in complete transparency and in a very professional manner. Previously, the government had been barred from enforcing audit due to lack of scrutiny. r ma
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