The President of Islamabad Chamber of Commerce & Industry, Mr.Mahfooz Elahi, while addressing a meeting of the representatives of markets and industrial sector said that Reformed General Sales Tax (RGST) is totally unacceptable to the business community, because it will create a number of problems along with an increase in inflation.

He said to generate additional revenue; government should look other options like bringing real estate and agriculture income into the tax net. These sectors must be taxed to increase the base of taxpayers and confidence of existing taxpayers needs to be improved, President said.

The government must create an environment of trust, whereas harassment policy and forced taxation will not bring the desired results. The representatives of the business community said that by doing so, corruption will increase.
 
Mr.Mahfooz Elahi said that majority of the private sector trade don’t have a clear understanding of Reformed General Sales Tax, and even government has not taken any initiative for creating positive awareness about it to let the people know about collection mechanism of taxes under RGST.

President said that government should have series of meetings with the trade bodies across the country to discuss pros and cons of the RGST and its effects on the general public. He said that mass awareness programs were needed to be conducted to avoid any state of confusion but government has failed to adopt this strategy due to unknown reasons.

He stressed on the need of promoting economic journalism, to provide a clear picture on the economic issues to the people of Pakistan to play an effective role in the development of the country.

President ICCI said that on the basis of self-calculations, the government is speculating approximate figures of tax collection, but no one exactly knows about the total tax collection figure.

The representative of the business community out-rightly rejected the move of implementation of RGST and said that government must revisit its strategy for tax collection to avoid harassment and not to over burden the people, who are already under a great stress due to poor planning of the government.