Trade chambers demand immediate withdrawal of duty

Also flay withholding taxes, FBR’s discretionary powers; threaten to protest

LAHORE: All Punjab Chambers of Commerce and Industry and other trade associations, at a convention under the umbrella of the Lahore Chamber of Commerce and Industry (LCCI), demanded the government to withdraw regulatory duty, withholding tax on bank transactions and FBR’s discretionary powers immediately.

“We would gather outside the parliament if our genuine demands are not accepted”, the participants of convention said on Wednesday.



The participants also issued a joint communiqué defending the rights of business community and asking the government to act promptly and resolve these issues without delay.

LCCI President Malik Tahir Javed said that withholding tax has not only hit the business community hard but also affected the banking sector as people have started using other channels.

He said that the new regulatory duty regime would be hardly doing any service to the economy, adding that the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) should also withdraw the recently imposed regulatory duty otherwise its “destruction would be beyond imagination”. The LCCI president said that unjustified levies like withholding tax are discouraging new taxpayers and obstructing the expansion of the tax net.

Javed said that indirect taxes are being removed gradually throughout the world except Pakistan where they make up 60% of the revenue collected despite the fact that expenses on this practice are higher than the collections.



He said that tax collection has increased by around 60% from 2012-13 to 2015-16 but number of tax filers has reduced to 0.9 million from 1.4 million during this period.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 9^th, 2017.

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