Purchasing from POS-integrated retailers: FBR announces prize scheme for customers

ISLAMABAD: The Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) on Friday announced the long-awaited prize scheme for the customers purchasing from the Point of Sale (POS) integrated retailers across the country, under which Rs53 million prizes would be distributed every month through balloting.

The first prize of Rs10,00,000 will be distributed among the winner who will get a receipt for buying from the retailers integrated with POS machines. There will be four prizes having a value of Rs 250,000 each. There will be 1,000 prizes of Rs 50,000 each. There will be total prizes of Rs 53 million to be distributed among the winners who will get the POS-integrated receipts on their purchases.

The government decided to announce the prize schemes to lure customers to purchase from those retailers who are part of the POS-integrated system for paying their reduced rate of GST. This is a part of the documentation exercise in a bid to broaden the narrowed tax base.

According to the government’s estimates, a total of Rs 18 trillion transactions occurred at the retail stage but the government was capturing only Rs 3.5 trillion, so there was a huge untapped gap that could make a big difference if bridged properly through the documentation exercise.

The government had announced this prize scheme on the eve of the last budget 2021-22 but its implementation took six months period. According to the FBR’s announcement, the first balloting for winning the prizes would be done on January 15, 2022 at the board’s headquarters.

The FBR’s spokesperson said that all those customers would be included for the prizes, who would purchase something from the POS-integrated retailers during the ongoing month (December 2021). The FBR also decided to launch advertisement campaign from December 11.