LAHORE: Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) continued to display satisfactory performance in the fourth consecutive month of the current financial year and achieved provisional gross revenue collection of over Rs 1074 billion for the first four months of the fiscal year by recording an increase of around 20.4% over the revenue collected during the corresponding period of last fiscal year. Refunds during this period were issued to the tune of Rs 42 billion as against Rs 21 billion issued during this year depicting an increase of 100% during the corresponding period of previous fiscal year. In addition to issuance of these refunds, another amount of approximately Rs 13 billion were issued as sales tax refund to refund claimants through direct credit to their bank accounts. Provisional net revenue collection was recorded as Rs 1033 billion for the first four months of the fiscal year with an increase of around 18.5% over the net revenue collected during the same period of last fiscal year. The target for the year was fixed with an annual increase of 19.2% over the previous year. The provisional collection for the month of October 2017 was Rs 267 billion which showed an increase of more than 12% over the collection for October 2016 which depicted a substantial improvement over the growth of 5.23 percent registered in the monthly collection last year. During fiscal year 2016-17, the collection for the first four months stood at Rs 872 billion as against the figure of Rs 1032 billion collected this year. During October, 2017, according to the provisional figures received so far, FBR made a net collection of more than Rs 267 billion as against Rs 237 billion collected during October, 2016. The revenue collection trend during the first four months of the financial year augurs well for the efforts of FBR towards achievement of the assigned annual revenue targets. Federal Board of Revenue also wished to dispel the impression created by some reports appearing in sections of the press that the number of the returns received for the tax year 2017 declined as compared to returns received for tax year 2016. This impression was grossly misleading as only 352,022 returns were received upto November 1, 2016, whereas 608,587 returns were received till November 1, 2017. This shows a substantial increase of 72% in the number of returns received during the same period of previous fiscal year.
Published in Daily Times, November 2nd 2017.
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