The Punjab government has seen an improvement in tax collection by 8.9 percent YoY to Rs156.2 billion during the 8MFY21, showed provincial civil accounts.
According to the document during the same period of FY20’, the total tax collected by the government was Rs143.4 billion.
The target set by the government for the current fiscal year in the budget last year was 220.9 billion rupees, and as of February, the civil accounts show that the provincial government has collected 70 percent of the target.
The highest growth was seen by the Transport sector’s Motor Vehicles, where against the budget target of 675 million rupees, the collection had reached Rs1.12 billion. It saw an increase of 199% from 372.85 million in the same period of last year.
It was followed by Punjab Revenue Authority (PRA) in the collection of sales tax on services, which rose by a whopping 35.4pc to Rs93.2bn from Rs68.8bn in spite of the Covid-19 pandemic. The eight-month PRA collection is over 77pc of its sales tax on a service target of Rs121bn, according to the provincial civil accounts.
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The 8MFY21 total collection by the finance department was 96.6 billion against the target for the current fiscal year of Rs125 billion, meaning that only 22.7 percent of the tax collection remains to be done in the months leading to June.
According to a press release by the PRA this week, the tax collection during the month of March equaled Rs10.6 billion, meaning that Rs107.2 billion out of the Rs125 billion target was collected.
On the other hand, the Board of revenue recorded a fall in the collection of taxes by more than 27 percent. The collection during the 8MFY21’ fell from Rs50.6 billion to Rs36.8 billion for the same period. The target tax collection is Rs56 billion.
The Excise and Taxation Department was able to marginally increase its collection to Rs21.6bn by 3.9 percent from the same period last fiscal year.
In the meanwhile, the provincial Resource Mobilization Committee (RMC) has also started meetings to deliberate on proposals from different departments for incorporation in the next budget for raising provincial own tax and non-tax revenues.
Despite the increase in provincial tax revenues in Punjab this year, the development spending appears to have decreased as the province has spent Rs137.2bn out of its budgeted annual development program of Rs337bn.
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