Minister inaugurates tax bar office

F.P. Report

PESHAWAR: Provincial Minister for Higher Education Mushtaq Ahmed Ghani has asked the Tax Consultants and members of Tax Bar to come forward and join the hands with the government to educate the business community and tax payers to pay off their taxes as national obligation.

He said this soon after inaugurating the Regional Tax Office of Hazara Tax Bar Association. The ceremony was attended by the members of HTBA, office-bearers of different trader’s bodies and notables of the area.

Mushtaq Ahmed Ghani said that KP government has established fully computerized and fool proof system of Tax recovery and due to efficient management system and confidence of the business community, it has shown remarkable improvement in their tax collection system.

He said KP government is striving for the self-reliance policy for which he asked the tax consultants to play their due role to achieve the collection targets which will be ultimately spend on the people of KP for developmental projects and schemes.

Ghani remarked that earlier due to lope holes in the tax collections, a huge chunk of public money was looted and was wasted but now after the introduction of RTI act, each and every citizens can ask about the collection of funds and taxes and their utilization and our government has stopped the all routes and means of corruption in every segment of society.

Provincial minister remarked that after the 18th amendment, the recovery of sales tax is shifted to provinces and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Revenue Authority (KPRA) is established and is being up-graded with the latest computerized system to enable the sales tax payers to file returns and statements through efficient staff.

The capacity of the KPRA is also being improved and said that we ( KP) government consider tax bar and tax consultants as part of our team and extended full co-operation to them and had also asked the tax lawyers

to come forward with solid proposals to improve the revenue of KP government.

Mushtaq Ahmed Ghani in his concluding remarks has told that KP government will provide full financial and moral support to HTBA to establish their library and computer labs etc. as Law department of KP government is agreed to provide special grant in this regard.

Earlier, Rashid Javed, acting president of HTBA in his welcome address, has informed that HTBA is interested to establish well equipped computerized lab and library for the members which will also be made available to the tax machinery to facilitate the tax payers and added that HTBA is regularly holding seminars and workshops for its members to update them with latest changes and policies of KP and FBR.