ISLAMABAD:In a major development, the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) on Tuesday issued legally-binding instructions to the relevant departments to block mobile phone connections of over half-a-million non-filers, as its campaign to voluntarily register retailers also falls apart with only 75 retailers availing the scheme.
The tax machinery also faced another setback on Tuesday when its 10-month tax collection fell short of the goal by around Rs40 billion. Against the July-April target of Rs7.414 trillion, the FBR provisionally collected over Rs7.38 trillion. There was a 31% increase in the collection during the 10 months period.
The developments came on the heels of growing resentment within the tax machinery over the government’s decision to remove 25 allegedly corrupt and inefficient officers. The general body of the customs officers met on Tuesday and the 450 officers from grade 17 to 22 considered the options to either go on strike or file en masse applications to go on leave.
The FBR has issued the Income Tax General Order (ITGO) to disable the mobile phone SIMs of 506,671 persons who were not appearing on active taxpayer list but are liable to file the Income Tax Returns for Tax Year 2023 under the provisions of the Income Tax Ordinance, 2001, according to an announcement by the FBR.
One person may have more than one SIM card and all of those connections will be cut off with immediate effect, said a senior FBR official. He said that about 1 million to 1.5 million SIM cards would be blocked because of the FBR order.
It is the first major, much-needed step that the FBR has taken after all its reminders and tax notices could not convince the people to fulfil their statutory obligation. Under the act of parliament, every person earning Rs600,000 annual income or owning at least 1,000cc car or a house is liable to file the annual tax statement.
The FBR had served tax notices on 2.4 million such non-filers and in the first phase it had blocked the SIM cards of over half a million who had taxable income and were earlier filing statements but did not file this time.
