LAHORE: The Punjab Revenue Authority (PRA) is expected to collect Rs82 billion in the outgoing fiscal year against the target of Rs86.5bn, an approximate shortfall of around 5.2 per cent.

However, the collection under the Punjab Sales Tax and the Punjab Infrastructure Development Cess (PIDC) remained Rs62bn in 2015-16 against the actual target of Rs72bn.

The authority, which deals in 62 services and has 35,339 registered taxpayers as of April 2017, has got a major chunk of collection from the non-telecom sector in the outgoing financial year.

Officials said improved collection in withholding tax and from restaurants/hotels under the Restaurant Invoice Monitoring System (RIMS), change in description of some services, effective surveys to identify new taxpayers, and increased revenues from four regional commissionorates other than Lahore are the major factors behind increase in revenue collection.

Telecom sector revenue has witnessed less growth as the Punjab government has withdrawn exemption on internet services through Finance Bill 2017, the officials added.

The authority, however, could not tap targeted revenue from three newly-added services-cosmetics hair surgery and implants, warehouse and cold storage and packaging and handling in the outgoing financial year.

The collection from PIDC, which was implemented in May 2016, is provisionally estimated at approximately Rs3bn in outgoing year.

Talking to Dawn, PRA Chairperson Dr Raheal Siddiqi said the authority has collected Rs53.17bn from non-telecom and Rs15.58bn from telecom under PST and Rs2.68bn under PIDC as of May 30.

He says the authority is expected to generate more than Rs11bn in June 2017 (if the government extends a week up to July 7, 2017) which will be a record revenue collection in a single month by authority since its inception in 2012.

Siddiqi says earlier the authority was able to collect Rs8.2bn maximum in a month in February 2017.

He said the pending claims for cross adjustment of input tax of Rs 5.7bn with the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR), if received, can help the authority surpass the annual target.

The last meeting in this regard was held last week to convince FBR to transfer the amount to PRA.

The PRA chairperson further said the revenue collection from telecom sector has not exceeded more than a billion rupees in comparative financial years of 2015-16 and 2016-17 owing to a few factors.

Major factors include the decline in number of regular phone calls and shifting of regular calls to internet-related calls and exemption of sales tax on internet by the provincial government, he added.

He said as the authority has projected Rs130bn target for 2017-18, it is going to establish two independent commissionorates at Sahiwal and Bahawalpur and up to six sub-offices in different districts to improve revenue collection.

Mr Siddiqi says regular awareness campaigns among concerned stakeholders and April 10 as Tax Day to popularise the tax payment culture are other contributing factors behind the increase in annual revenue collection for 2016-17.

Published in Dawn, July 1st, 2017