Revenue collection has seen 17% growth, says FBR

ISLAMABAD: The Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) on Sunday stated that revenue collection has grown by 17% with additional revenues of Rs345 billion as compared to the collection of the previous year.

According to an FBR statement, during the FY2019-20, against a Rs920-billion income tax target for the period from July to January 2020, the FBR collected Rs 897.5 billion, which shows an increase of 18.1% compared to the corresponding months in the last year in which Rs759.1 billion income tax was collected.

Likewise, the target of sales tax collection till January 2020 was set as Rs1,039 billion out of which a net collection of Rs996.6 billion has been was achieved, showing a growth of 24.7% compared to the corresponding period of last year in which Rs799.1 billion were collected.

Federal Excise Duty of Rs145.1 billion was collected against the target of Rs151 billion from July to January, which showed an increase of 23.6%, said the statement.

The customs duty collection was targeted at Rs399 billion till January 2020 while the board managed to collect Rs373.8 billion compared to Rs390.6 billion last year in the same months. So far, FBR has collected Rs 2,407.7 billion against a target of Rs2,509 billion, which shows an increase by 16.7% compared to last year when Rs 2,062.7 billion were collected.

Domestic tax collection has also increased by 28%. Domestic sales tax increased by 41% during July-January 2020 while total domestic revenues of Rs 1,339.91 billion were collected compared to last year’s Rs1,057.60 billion. Revenue at the import stage has grown by 6% against the budgeted target of 36.8%.

FBR has issued additional refunds worth Rs54 billion this year as compared to last year. Total refunds of Rs131.01 billion were released till January 2020 whereas, during the last year, refunds of Rs76.71 billion were issued, the statement added.

The board has also released the refunds' details issued through FASTER system. The total number of refund claims was 6,081 with a claimed amount of Rs37,614 million.

The FASTER system has processed 4,606 cases with a claimed amount of Rs33,364 million which translates to 89.99% of total cases. After the processing of such cases, total refunds of Rs29,303 million have been issued meaning 87.47% of processed cases. Through the FASTER system, Rs4,061 million were deferred due to want of required data.

Up to February 29, total returns for Tax Year 2019 were 2,483,866 whereas 373,877 new taxpayers paid taxes in Tax Year 2019, concluded the statement.