FBR collects Rs206m from new taxpayers

About 64,000 people brought into tax net.

ISLAMABAD: The Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) has over the past five months brought about 64,000 wealthy people into the tax net who were earlier not paying taxes despite having taxable incomes, documents show.

The board has also collected more than Rs206 million from the new taxpayers and issued national tax numbers to them.

According to the documents, FBR acted against 122,000 rich people, who had taxable incomes, in a campaign to broaden the tax net. This resulted in submission of income tax returns by about 10,000 people.

According to the breakdown, Regional Tax Office of Abbottabad collected Rs246,000 from new taxpayers, the Bahawalpur tax office collected Rs1 million, the Faisalabad office collected Rs7,000, the Gujranwala office collected Rs184,000, the Hyderabad office collected Rs284,000, the Islamabad office collected Rs63,000, the Karachi tax office-1 collected Rs3.18 million, the tax office-2 could not collect anything in new taxes and the tax office-3 collected Rs968,000.

Besides these, the Lahore tax office-1 collected Rs9.8 million, tax office-2 collected Rs17.38 million, the Multan office collected Rs516,000, the Peshawar office collected Rs615,000, the Quetta office collected Rs850,000, the Rawalpindi office collected Rs75,000, the Sargodha office collected Rs2.54 million and the Sukkur office collected Rs389,000.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 15^th, 2011.