Finance Minister Surendra Pandey Wednesday instructed the revenue administration to specially go after real estate dealers and brokers, lawyers, consultants and teachers enjoying multiple sources of income while making efforts to widen tax net. At a program organized to review the revenue mobilization and performances of revenue administration, Pandey even urged Inland Revenue Department, Customs Department and Department of Revenue Investigation to perform their duties in a planned way. He also praised the chiefs of respective departments for their efforts in maintaining higher revenue collection growth rate and also instructed them to further step up their performances. Revenue Secretary Krishna Hari Baskota also asked the departments to give special emphasis on market inspection, investigation and tax auditing for wider tax compliance and to prevent revenue leakage. According to a press release, Ministry of Finance has already mobilized Rs 46.69 billion in revenue over the first four months of the current fiscal year. The collection recorded for the period was 13 percent higher than the target set for the period and 41 percent growth over revenue that it collected in the same period last year. Breakdown of the revenue collections for the period further shows that the government mobilized Rs 15.62 billion in value added tax (VAT), Rs 10.31 billion in customs duty, Rs 7.20 billion in excise duty, Rs 5.04 billion in income tax and Rs 1.75 billion in registration fees. The collections for all the sources, excluding VAT, have exceeded the target in a range of 2 to 43 percent. However, the government has still lagged behind in meeting the target of VAT collections because of poor compliance and weak monitoring system.
Source: Republica