Businessmen come up with set of tax proposals

Reject condition requiring submission of CNIC of unregistered buyers.

LAHORE: Businessmen have called on the tax authorities to immediately take back the condition requiring registered manufacturers and suppliers to submit national tax number or computerised national identity card number of unregistered buyers and floated their own set of proposals for expanding the tax net.

In a meeting with Inland Revenue Chief Commissioner Fiza Muzaffar at the Lahore Chamber of Commerce and Industry (LCCI) on Thursday, LCCI President Irfan Qaiser Sheikh said the NTN and CNIC submission condition for importers, exporters and manufacturers filing monthly sales tax and federal excise returns had perturbed businessmen.

He was of the view that all incomes should be taxed irrespective of the source as Pakistan’s tax-to-gross domestic product ratio was quite low. Businessmen also supported the idea of increasing the tax burden on those individuals and businesses that were regularly meeting their tax commitments.

In the proposals, the businessmen also pointed to the difficulty faced by ordinary taxpayers in getting income tax exemption certificate. Another problem faced by importers is that the refundable tax is adjusted against advance payment of turnover tax and when traders claim refund of input tax, the tax department starts doing an audit.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 30^th, 2011.