Finance Minister Miftah Ismail has assured the business community that their problems related to electricity bills and taxation will be resolved soon.
He made this announcement during a meeting at the Finance Division with a Markazi Tanzeem-Tajaran Pakistan delegation led by its president, Muhammad Kashif Chaudary.
Miftah tweeted on Sunday that he would meet with business leaders to discuss their concerns. “The Prime Minister has also called me and instructed me to ensure that small traders are completely satisfied with the new tax law,” Ismail tweeted.
According to him, the government will exempt stores with invoices of less than 150 units from the tax in an effort to appease small enterprises.
The government would charge Rs3,000 to retailers who are not registered with the FBR, and neither tax notices nor FBR officers’ visits to their stores will be made.
Additionally, a new fixed income and sales tax scheme for small business or retailers was suggested. The coalition government in power declared in the budget for 2022–2023 that fixed income and sales taxes would also be collected in addition to electricity bills.
The amount of this tax, according to Finance Minister Miftah Ismail, will range from Rs3,000 to Rs10,000.
According to Kashif Chaudary, the business sector is crucial to the nation’s economic growth. Ismail also acknowledged the situation and gave his word that the government will take every necessary action to assist and support the neighbourhood.
Previously, the business community urged that the federal government immediately stop collecting the “fixed tax” through electricity bills.
Hasnain Khurshid Ahmad, president of the Sarhad Chamber of Commerce and Industry, stated that the government has been able to collect sales tax from Rs3,000 to Rs20,000 through power bills, which is incomprehensible to local business owners.
The forced system of “fixed” sale tax on commercial power metres, which did not distinguish between small and large firms or godowns, was a reflection of the government’s anti-business policies and amounted to the economic murder of the community of merchants, according to Khurshid.
