ISLAMABAD, June 25: Facing an imminent shortfall in revenue, the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) has extended the tax amnesty schaeme until June 30 to facilitate defaulting taxpayers to deposit principal revenue with the tax machinery.

“We have extended the amnesty scheme to pocket extra billions for reaching closer to the revenue target,” said FBR chairman Mumtaz Haider Rizvi on Monday.

The tax amnesty scheme was announced on May 22 for taxpayers who owed outstanding tax money.

As per the scheme, they were offered waiver of default surcharge, penalties and withdrawal of criminal proceedings if principal amount of income tax, sales tax, federal excise duty or tax withheld by the withholding agents was to be deposited by the end of the current month.

Earlier, the scheme was offered until June 25.

The chairman said that the FBR had collected Rs1805 billion until June 25, leaving a huge amount of Rs147 billion to be collected in the next five days.

When Rizvi took over in February this year, he promised to collect Rs1952 billion by the end of the fiscal year in June 2012.

But, he told Dawn that he would still go for the original target. “I am struggling to reach closer to the target,” the FBR chief said.

In June this year alone, he said Rs178 billion have been collected.

“Maximum revenue is coming through enforcement measures,” he said.

Last year, in June the FBR had raised Rs248.556 billion as the FBR revised downward the revenue collection target three times to Rs1588 billion with a hope to achieve it, but the tax machinery remained short of the revised target by more than Rs38 billion.

The FBR has also announced amnesty for recipients of illegal refunds to the tune of Rs32.6 billion against claims based on fake and flying invoices.

The amnesty scheme has been announced in all four federal taxes – income tax, sales tax, federal excise duty and customs duty.

Asked whether the revenue target will be achieved, the FBR chairman said he would try his best.

However, he said that in case FBR crosses Rs1900 billion, it would still be a big boost.

The chairman admitted that regional tax offices (RTOs) would have to improve capacity to raise taxes from potential taxpayers.

The government has projected the accumulative fiscal deficit at 7.4 per cent for the year 2011-12. This projection was made on the presumption that the FBR would achieve the original target of Rs1952 billion.

Now with the imminent shortfall in revenue collection, the budget deficit would go up further from the projected 7.4 per cent. The original budget deficit target for the year 2011-12 was 4 per cent.