ISLAMABAD: September 29: The government has constituted a 10-member task force to reform Pakistan tax collection system of the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR).
Federal minister for Finance, Dr Shamshad Akhtar, will be chairperson of the task force. Its other members included Dr Manzoor Ahmad, , Musharraf R Cyan , Amanullah Amir , Amir Ijaz Khan, Khalid Mahmood, Mahmood Khalid, Malik Amjad Zubair Tiwana and Ardisher Saleem Tariq (Member (Reforms & Modernise) FBR. He will act as task force.
The task force will propose implementation plan for separating revenue collection and tax policy, It will also review FBR tax collection data and relevant analysis and review tax system performance indicators and reporting mechanism and identify areas of revenue performance and potential. The task force will also review access of FBR to the internal and third-party data and its use in the tax administration and seek proposals from the relevant agencies on developing further data use in enhancing collection efficiency and lowering compliance and administrative areas.
Pakistan tax collection system has proven a big failure. Even after lapse of seven and half decades it has no acknowledgeable tax base which is adversely affecting Pakistan’s financial health. FBR has also failed on plugging leakages in revenue collection system. Its employees and facilitators have become filthy rich and they have build up empires particularly of the real estate, but Pakistan’s tax collection ratio to GDP has been a big question mark. The international donors agencies have been continuously highlighting Pakistan’s tax collection related issues and on their advice the government launched numerous tax reforms in the past but all of them ended up in a failure due to corrupt high ups of FBR and its beneficiaries.
The government has taken a tax collection of Rs 7250 billion but its collection pace shows FBR may not be able to achieve tax collection target for the current fiscal year. Pakistan has great potential for much higher tax collection and reduce its dependence on loans, but elite- based corrupt tax collection system is successfully blocking any attempt for reforms in FBR. Dr Shamshad Akhtar is a true and honest professional economist and she may use her full capacity to reform tax collection system of Pakistan but there is a possibility that the corrupt FBR system may resist her effort to vein in the powerful corrupt employees of the board.
