ISLAMABAD, Pakistan: Despite all odds, the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) has put in tremendous effort to achieve the revenue target for the month of May 2023 by collecting Rs 605 billion gross revenues.
Against a target of Rs 621 billion, the FBR was able to collect Rs 572 billion net revenue while refunds amounting to Rs 33 billion were issued.
It collected Rs 205 billion under the head of domestic income tax compared to Rs 131 billion in May 2022, thereby showing a growth of 57%.
A healthy year-on-year growth of 28% was achieved in the domestic sales tax with collection of almost Rs 100 billion.
Around Rs 41 billion were collected as Federal Excise Duty (FED) showing a year-on-year increase of 32%. However, a cumulative growth of almost 44% has been achieved in the collection of domestic taxes.
This is despite the fact that the economy has slowed down and GDP growth rate has been revised downward.
The cumulative growth of almost 44% has been achieved in the collection of domestic taxes. However, on the import side same momentum could not be maintained due to unprecedented compression in imports.
In US$ terms, imports in the Country declined by 37% in May 2023 compared to May 2022.
Moreover, the import of high duty items such as vehicles, home appliances, as well as miscellaneous consumer goods such as garments, fabrics, footwear etc have been drastically reduced, changing the import mix.
This has impacted collection of Customs duties and other taxes.
Despite 18% dip in collection of Customs duties, and 11% decline in overall tax collection at import stage, the FBR’s overall growth was registered at 16% compared to previous year.
