Islamabad : The government on Tuesday constituted a high level committee to be headed by Special Assistant to Prime Minister , Haroon Akhtar Khan.
Other members of the committee from the government side included Special Assistant to Prime Minister , Bilal Azhar Kayani and Rana Ihsan Afzal and the traders will nominate their representatives to provide their fellow businessmen ‘s point of view to the government regarding inclusion of 37 AA in the Financial Act 2025.
This development came during a meeting held here to discuss the traders argument on inclusion of 73 AA provision in the budget.
Finance minister , Mohammad Aurangzeb chaired the meeting which was also attended by Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) chairman , Rashid Langerial and other senior officials of Finance Division and other relevant departments. The representatives of traders community led by Atiq Mir presented the view point of the traders and industrialists over inclusion of 37 AA in the Financial Act 2025.
The provision added in the Financial Act 2025 provides powers to the FBR to arrest any individual or group of individuals involved in General Sales Tax (GST) theft amounting to over Rs 1.5 million. FBR is of the view that GST was being grossly under reported by a vast majority of businesses in Pakistan. Finance minister, Mohammad Aurangzeb has made it clear to the business community that misuse of GST provision was hurting revenue generation and new powers to FBR officials for arrest of any businessman involved in GST under payment were inevitable.
Business community of Pakistan is fearing misuse of the new powers and wants withdrawal of the controversial powers aimed at arresting of the businessmen to be allegedly involved in GST under reporting.
Pakistan is among those countries where no one wants to pay government taxes. The same culture is dominant in business community of Pakistan. This segment of the society is believed to be the major tax payers of any country , but unfortunately its not the case with Pakistan.
Although the government has constituted the committee to listen to the traders community’s view point on the issue and file recommendation to the decision-making body in 30 days , but there is visibly no chance of the government;s back downing from its existing position on the new powers awarded to FBR under the Finance Act 2025.
