ISLAMABAD: According to The News on Tuesday, the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) failed to meet its money collection goal of Rs457 billion for January 2022, falling short by Rs27 billion, defying the trend of collecting more revenue than the target during the current fiscal year.
The shortfall might be a severe setback in the government’s attempts to fulfill its Rs6.1 trillion tax collection goal for the fiscal year 2021-22, which was increased from Rs5.829 trillion under the IMF program.
The trend of exceeding the FBR’s monthly revenue collection goal turned at the start of the second half (Jan-June) of the current financial year, when the FBR missed its monthly target for January 2022 by Rs27 billion, collecting Rs430 billion instead.
The FBR, on the other hand, claimed that it had collected Rs262 billion more than its seven-month revenue goal (July-Jan).
However, the monthly objective for January 2022 was missed, according to preliminary income collection figures.
The FBR collected Rs3,352 billion in the first seven months, and it now has to collect Rs2,658 billion in the following five months (February-June) to reach the Rs6,100 billion total goal set by its board.
Why did FBR fail to reach its goal?
On Monday night, The News sent a query to FBR’s official spokeswoman to find out why the January 2022 collection goal was missed but got no answer until the story was filed.
FBR has successfully maintained the pace of its revenue collection growth trajectory, according to an official notification issued Monday night.
Provisional revenue collection data for the first seven months of the fiscal year 2021-22, from July 2021 to January 2022, have been provided by the FBR.
According to preliminary data, the country’s top revenue collecting agency collected net income of Rs3,352 billion from July 2021 to January 2022 of the current fiscal year, exceeding the goal of Rs3,090 billion by Rs262 billion. This is a 30.4 percent increase over the Rs2,571 billion collected during the same time the previous year.
The net collection for January 2022 was Rs 430 billion, up 17.2% from Rs 367 billion the previous year.
These figures would improve considerably more at the end of the day after accounting for book adjustments.
In the first seven months of the current fiscal year (July 2021 to January 2022), the gross collection increased by 30.6 percent, from Rs 2,705 billion to Rs 3,533 billion. In the first seven months of the current fiscal year, refunds disbursed climbed by 35.9% to Rs182 billion, up from Rs134 billion the previous year.
According to the FBR statement, the FBR has implemented a variety of innovative policy and operational initiatives with the goal of maximizing income potential via digitalization, transparency, and taxpayer convenience.