The Chairman of National Business Group Pakistan, the President of the Pakistan Businessmen and Intellectuals Forum, the President of All Karachi Industrial Alliance, the Chairman of the FPCCI Advisory Board, and the President and former provincial minister Mian Zahid Hussain on Monday said that tax targets should not be set based on expectations and desires instead of ground realities.

He said that instead of digitizing the economy to achieve revenue objectives, the focus was on enforcement, which prevented them from being completed.

Mian Zahid Hussain said that no attention was paid to increasing the size of the economy, which led to a shortfall and will also lead to a tax shortfall in the next year.

Talking to the business community, the veteran business leader said things could be improved by collecting taxes from non-tax-paying sectors instead of the new mini-budget.

Otherwise, he warned there would be a serious shortfall in the next quarter, making it impossible to install the loan by the IMF.

The business leader said that due to the current tax rate, interest rates, and electricity and gas prices, the survival of the industries has become difficult, so how will they pay so much tax?

This month, the IMF will review the implementation of its conditions, after which it will make important decisions. The IMF may also take more stringent measures, increasing the pressure on the public and the inflation rate, which has eased to 6.9 per cent. The lender may also be dissatisfied because certain sectors’ costs are not handed over to the provinces.

Mian Zahid Hussain said that the matters to be handed over to the provinces included expenditures on the Benazir Income Support Program, fertiliser subsidies, and PSDP provincial projects.

He added that the IMF will also review the implementation of the NFP, under which the provinces are mandated to increase their tax revenue and invest more in the health and education sectors.

Under the NFP, all provinces were supposed to enact legislation on agricultural income tax by October 30. Still, not a single province has been able to do so, and taxes have not been levied on traders, developers, and real estate as the IMF wished.

In the current situation, there is a tax shortfall of 190 billion rupees in the first four months of the current financial year, which will cause the IMF to demand more tax measures, which will have no choice without recognition.