• LANGRIAL says that the new 15PC tax rate on passive income aims to address disparity with active commercial gains
• The political leadership and the help of Intel agencies enlisted to guarantee compliance, eliminate corruption
Karachi: The president of the Federal Income Board (FBR), Rashid Mahmood Langial, on Wednesday detailed a radical review of the country’s fiscal compliance system, promising to take energetic measures against non -compliant sectors, expand digital monitoring and address long data lagoons in income tax regimes, retail and liabilities.
Talking with Geographical newsLangial said that the recent impulse of government application in the sugar sector had resulted in a 39 percent increase in tax collection without any change in tax rates, and that similar measures are now being implemented in other key industries.
“The history of non -compliance in the tobacco sector will change fundamentally, as it did in sugar,” he said.
He acknowledged that increasing tax rates on the formal sector often led to market erosion by the informal sector, but said that the government’s solution is to point to non -compliant companies directly.
“The sugar factories that did not comply with the business have closed due to our monitoring. Now we are achieving almost 100 percent compliance in most parts of the country,” Langial said.
He also revealed that the Intelligence Office had the task of monitoring FBR teams to avoid collusion and corruption. “Thanks to IB, we take several actions against black sheep in our own ranks,” he said.
Langial said that similar monitoring has begun in the poultry sector, where initial controls revealed a significant subcreverning of tax production and evasion. “One month of monitoring revealed millions of rupees in the evasion of income tax,” he said.
On the issue of passive income, Langial said that a new tax rate of 15 pieces on passive income, compared to 29pc over active income, in an effort to address bias against business investment and foster investment.
Langial also addressed comparisons between salaried and construction sectors, noting that such comparisons are misleading.
“There is an salaried sector within the construction, and the sectors cannot be compared to income types,” he said, emphasizing the complexity of fiscal policy in different industries.
“We are saying that a person who has RS50 million in the bank will be taxed at 15 percent. This is an attempt to address discrimination between active and liabilities,” he said.
Posted in Dawn, June 12, 2025
