Daily Times

A day after the country’s top tax machinery broke all the previous record of revenue generation, Minister of State for Information and Broadcasting Farrukh Habib on Sunday took to the twitter for drawing a comparison between the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) government’s current year tax collection and the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz’s (PML-N) last year.

In a series of tweets, he said the PML-N government, during its last year (2017-18), collected only Rs 3,840 billion tax, coupled with revenue on $60 billion import, an amnesty scheme and withholding of refunds. The PTI government, in the 11 month of the current year, collected a ‘record’ tax of Rs 4,140 billion despite a reduction in 20 percent of the imports.

It also disbursed a ‘record’ refund amounting to Rs 216 billion, he added.

Farrukh said the reforms in the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR), carried out on the special instructions of Prime Minister Imran Khan, had helped achieve 28 per cent increase in the collection of sales tax, 18 per cent surge in customs revenue through different measures including curbs on smuggling, 11.5 per cent increase in federal excise duty, and, above all, a surge of 54 per cent in the revenue which was ensured with addition of more people into the tax net.