Chairman Sindh Revenue Board (SRB) Khalid Mehmood has said that SRB has been making cautious efforts all the time to ensure that the business community do not faces a situation in which they receive notices from FBR and also from SRB however, in case they receive notices from both the tax collecting authorities, SRB tries its best to resolve the issue as per aspirations of the taxpayers.
Speaking at a meeting during his visit to the Karachi Chamber of Commerce & Industry (KCCI), Chairman SRB said that the issuance of double notices and other issues are taken up regularly with FBR and usually resolved through deliberations.
“Some progress has taken place in this regard while some issues are still pending and we are hoping that these will also be settled soon”, he added.
Chairman Businessmen Group (BMG) Zubair Motiwala, Vice Chairmen BMG Haroon Farooki and Jawed Bilwani, President KCCI Muhammad Idrees, Senior Vice President Abdul Rehman Naqi, Advisor SRB Mushtaq Kazmi and KCCI Managing Committee Members attended the meeting.
Khalid Mehmood said that sincere efforts were made to resolve the indenters issue whose tax was reduced from 13 percent to 3 percent yet, many indenters were still reluctant to pay tax and have gone into litigation.
“If they (Indenters) have any other feasible option, it can be shared with SRB and we will take it into consideration”, he assured.
He said that a point of sale measure was being taken to capture sales of restaurants, beauty parlors and other outlets where a large number of cash transactions were taking place.
“In this regard, we will be requiring your cooperation as it will be a substantive move”, he added.
Chairman SRB said, “Instead of being a typically strict tax collecting authority, we try our best to make SRB a taxpayers’ friendly institution and we have succeeded in attaining this objective to a certain extent.
Even in matters in which there were differences between the SRB and the business community, we usually acted leniently in terms of enforcement and the Board has been overall enjoying good relations with the business community of Karachi.”
“Any unwarranted notice received by members of the business community can be brought to SRB high-ups’ notice who are always available to listen to and amicably resolve the issues”, he added.
Chairman BMG Zubair Motiwala, while congratulating SRB Chairman on achieving record tax collection of Rs128 billion, stated that there was a huge potential for further growth as SRB has created an enabling and cordial environment in which the taxpayers were being facilitated as much as possible which was a very nice approach.
He stressed that out of a total revenue of Rs128 billion, Karachi must be contributing somewhere around Rs110 billion and out of this huge contribution, the Sindh government should look into the possibility of spending half of the amount on development of Karachi.
