FBR has seen a significant rise in income tax filings for Tax Year 2024, reaching 4.821 million returns as of October 26. This marks a considerable increase compared to the 2.407 million returns filed by the same time last year.
Interestingly, 1.820 million of this year’s returns reported no income, meaning these individuals paid no taxes. This is a sharp rise from the previous year when 859,929 people filed returns with no tax due.
Despite the high number of nil-filers, the FBR still collected Rs. 123 billion in tax payments from filed returns for 2024, which is more than double the Rs. 56.55 billion collected in 2023.
Additionally, since the beginning of the fiscal year on July 1, 2023, the FBR has registered 1,161,665 new individuals. A large portion of these new registrants are nil-filers, contributing to the growing number of people filing returns but not necessarily adding to tax revenue.
This increase in registrations and filings is part of FBR’s ongoing efforts to broaden the tax base. However, the high number of nil-filers raises questions about the effectiveness of these efforts in generating actual tax revenue. Moving forward, FBR may need to implement measures to encourage more people to file taxable income and ensure that tax collection grows in line with the increase in filed returns.
