Sohail Sarfraz | Abdul Rasheed Azad Published June 14, 2025 Updated about an hour ago ISLAMABAD: Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) Chairman Rashid Mahmood Langrial, Friday, disclosed before the National Assembly Standing Committee on Finance that the tax gap has reached Rs7.1 trillion in 2024-25 and approval of parliament is needed for enforcement measures of Rs389 billion, and help of provinces to increase tax-to-GDP ratio. On Friday, Minister of State for Finance and Revenue and Chairman FBR presented an overview of Finance Bill proposals and a summary of the FBR Transformation Plan. The FBR chairman disclosed that the FBR has suffered Rs0.5 trillion tax losses due to smuggling from borders, especially smuggling of petroleum products from Chagai district in Balochistan. He informed the committee that FBR has developed an ambitious transformation plan, which will be implemented from December 2025. He said that FBR’s real tax, after adjusting for inflation and real GDP, has been one per cent from 2016-18 and -0.3 per cent from 2018–24. He added that Pakistan faces a tax gap of Rs7.1 trillion in 2024–25 and also lags behind peers in the tax-to-GDP ratio. The FBR’s revenue as percentage of GDP stood at around 10.4 percent to 10.5 percent. Break-up of tax gap revealed that sales tax gap stood at Rs3.4 trillion, income tax gap Rs2 trillion, customs duty gap Rs0.5 trillion, totalling to Rs5.9 trillion. After including enforcement gap, autonomous growth and other factors, total tax gap stood at Rs7.2 trillion during 2024-25, the FBR chairman said. There is an urgent need to request provinces to help in raising tax-to-GDP ratio. Referring to the importance of enforcement, the FBR chairman said that the FBR has collected Rs50billion extra revenue from the sugar industry during the current year despite less production. This extra Rs50 billion has been collected without any change in tax rates on sugar industry. The digital integration exercise resulted in registration of 1,812 businesses having annual turnover of Rs11.8 trillion. A total of 489 companies are in testing phase and 42 companies are now digitally live. During the meeting, the finance committee…