KARACHI – Sindh Chief Minister Syed Qaim Ali Shah has formed a committee headed by Sindh Minister for Parliamentary Affairs Dr Sikandar Mendhro to prepare a draft for amendment in the law to streamline the agriculture tax with the consultation of grower organisations and other stakeholders and directed committee to submit the proposed draft in the Sindh Assembly.
The Chief Minister ruled out the impression that agriculture is not being charged with Income Tax and said that there were many taxes including Agriculture Income Tax which were already imposed and charged but not being projected in the media.
This he observed while presiding over meeting regarding income tax on agriculture held at CM House Karachi on Monday. The Chief Minister was of the view that agriculture sector is being taxed with Sindh Law Tax, Agriculture income tax, water tax, drainage tax, local cess tax and other indirect taxes on their inputs but neither same are being projected in media nor being in streamlined or rationalised or revised to avoid anomalies. Besides, the revenue officers had not played their due role in this regard. The Chief Minister Sindh Syed Qaim Ali Shah asked the Sindh Minister Dr Sikandar Mendhro to identify the lacuna in the law and prepare flawless formula draft paper on agriculture income tax to ensure equal privilege of taxable slab, concessions, remission and other facilities which are being provided to industrialist’s and trades.
He said that agriculture is important sector and the Sindh is agro based province, its whole economy and livelihood of more than 80pc people depend upon the agriculture. He said that Sindh Govt was deeply interested to encourage agriculture sector, by providing more facilities, modern cultivation methodologies and agricultural implements to the growers and added that this would also to benefit Govt, industrialists and traders.
The Chief Minister asked Dr Sikandar Mendhro to prepare draft for judicious amendments in the law or for new act with the consultation of Sindh Chamber of Agriculture, Sindh Abadgar Board, Revenue / Finance experts and opinion leaders amicably that to be workable.
He asked the Chief Secretary and authorities of Board of Revenue to activate their revenue staff for proper collection of the agricultural taxes.
The Sindh Minister for Parliamentary Affairs Sikandar Menhdro while briefing the meeting said that he had conducted the meeting with the representatives of grower’s organisations and had gone through the law and mechanism for agriculture tax but found many flaws in the system. He said that though taxable slab for charging agriculture income tax has been revised in the province of Punjab and it has been raised from Rs 80,000 to 4,00,000 but in Sindh still it is Rs 80,000 which is unjustified similarly many other anomalies are in the system which are supposed to be streamlined. He said that he has collected the proposals from stakeholders and he was working and finally to submit proposed draft in the Sindh Assembly.

Source : The Nation