Finance Minister, Shaukat Tarin, aims to include tax reforms in the coming budget that are progressive and reduce the need for interaction between the taxpayers and the authorities.
The minister informed this to the Federal Cabinet in a meeting held recently, Business Recorder reported.
The two aims of tax reforms highlighted by Tarin are not new for the government. In previous budgets, attempts have been made to implement reforms that lead to progressive taxation and curtail interactions between the general public and officials of the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR), but could not achieve much success.
FBR also implemented systems like Weboc to settle claims of exporters, but even then, there were complaints that officials dealing with these claims are not clearing them without extra incentives and inducement.
This time around, the Finance Minister has started with the formation of a sub-group on revenue comprising Chairman FBR, Michael Best, and Ehtisham Ahmed.
The sub-group is responsible for proposing a new domestic revenue mobilization plan in consultation with stakeholders and introducing measures to harmonize taxes. The officials will also be responsible to simplify taxes and aim for reducing the compliance burden. Furthermore, the sub-group will review and advise on the implementation of automation.
The minister gave the targets of improving tax administration and reducing litigation cases to the sub-group. He also assigned them the responsibility of making strategies to achieve 15 percent Tax-to-GDP in 4 years and 20 percent in 8 years, the news report informed.
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