The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Revenue Authority held a training workshop on Sales Tax Withholding Regulations 2020, for Public Sector Withholding Agents in Peshawar.

The training workshop was arranged with the support of Governance and Policy Project (GPP) of World Bank at Pearl Continental hotel Peshawar on Thursday. Additional Collector Headquarters KPRA Fazal Amin Shah gave a detailed presentation on the KPRA Sales Tax Withholding Regulations 2020, to the participants belonging to government departments, TMAs and Authorities.

The KPRA officials including KPRA Advisor on Tax Policy and Reforms Iftikhar Qutab and KPRA Advisor on Financial Management and Tax Audit Abdul Siddique answered the questions of the participants and assured them complete support to ease their work. Fazal Amin Shah in his presentation explained the process of withholding tax by the public sector withholding agents from the service providers. He explained how and at what ratio tax needs to be withheld from a service provider registered with KPRA and a service provider not registered with KPRA. He told the participants that KPRA needs their support and assistance in collecting the sales tax on services from their service providers which is levied under the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Finance Act 2013 by the provincial government. He asked them to take services only from those service providers who are registered with KPRA and avoid others as they would not be willing to pay the sales tax on services to KPRA.

Advisory Tax Policy and Reforms Iftikhar Qutab shed light on the history of sales tax in Pakistan and told them that Khyber Pakhtunkhwa has huge potential in services sector so the revenue of KPRA can be increased easily but KPRA would need their support and assistance. KPRA Advisor on Financial Management and Tax Audit Abdul Siddique is his concluding remarks said that the aim of the workshop was to sensitize them to uncap the services sector in the province which has potential of more than 60 billion revenue annually. “We can’t do this alone. All the government entities have to work together to increase the tax collection,” he said.