The FBR’s fixed tax scheme for small retailers has brought two new traders into the tax net (Express Tribune).
The numbers
| | | |—|—| | Total registrants | 317 | | — already filing | 315 | | — genuinely new | 2 (Quetta and Rawalpindi) | | Draft returns prepared | 6,631 | | — by existing filers | 6,587 | | — by new traders, unfiled | 44 | | Annual target | Rs50 billion | | Collected | Rs26 million | | Average per trader | Rs81,944 |
Rs26 million against Rs50 billion is about one twentieth of one percent of the target.
What the scheme offered
One percent of turnover, a minimum of Rs25,000, a one-page return — and exemption from routine audit, point-of-sale integration and digital invoicing. Eligibility: a single outlet with annual sales below Rs200 million over three consecutive years.
What this newspaper wrote on 9 September
That the state was “offering to stop looking” — that audit exemption, no POS integration and no digital invoicing meant the FBR was giving up the tools by which it would verify a turnover figure, in exchange for the shopkeeper declaring one at all.
We wrote then: “No figure has been published for how many retailers have opted in, or for expected revenue.”
Now there is one, and the trade did not take the offer.
Why that is the more interesting result
The scheme was designed on the theory that traders stay outside the net because compliance is burdensome and intrusive. Remove the audit, remove the machine, shrink the form to one page — and they will come in.
They did not. Three hundred and fifteen of the 317 were already inside.
That suggests the obstacle was never the paperwork. If a shopkeeper’s objection is to paying tax at all rather than to the manner of paying it, no simplification reaches him, because simplification is not what he is avoiding.
The minister’s framing
Minister of State for Finance Bilal Azhar Kayani: “By acting on the demands of traders, the government has fulfilled its promise; now shopkeepers must make the scheme a success.”
That places the failure on the traders. It is also, read plainly, an admission that the scheme was built to trader specifications — which is the most likely explanation for why it asks so little and yields so little.
The pattern this month
The Fuel Pass System for petrol relief is also a registration scheme, requiring a CNIC, a plate number, a registration date and a text message per fill. Petrol dealers have threatened to shut down over it.
Two schemes, both routed through voluntary registration, in a country whose registration systems are the problem being solved.
What is not established
No breakdown by city or sector beyond the two new registrants has been published, no deadline for the scheme has been reported, and the FBR has not said whether the Rs50 billion target will be revised.
[Image: The Express Tribune]
