Restaurants, wedding halls, beauty parlours, and boutiques across Pakistan charge General Sales Tax (GST) from customers daily, generating crores in revenue. However, many business owners keep a large portion of this GST instead of depositing it into the government treasury.
GST on goods is collected by the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR). In contrast, GST on services is collected by the provincial authorities, including the Sindh Revenue Board (SRB), Punjab Revenue Authority (PRA), Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Revenue Authority, and Balochistan Revenue Authority. According to reports, performance issues, staff shortages, and limited evening monitoring allow widespread tax evasion.
Most restaurant owners have parallel Point of Sale (POS) systems that are not connected to tax authorities. Those systems create false invoices with illegal software and in many cases, it does not contain QR codes or QR is invalid when it is scanned through official application or platforms.
