Laws in making to check outflow of untaxed money: FBR

KARACHI: The Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) is framing laws to check the outflow of untaxed money from the country, said its chairman Nisar Mohammad Khan on Monday.  

“We are working with the assistance of SBP (State Bank of Pakistan) and SECP (Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan) to frame a set of laws that would help prevent flight of untaxed money,” Khan told journalists. 

He said the FBR could not operate out of the parameters defined by the law to curb money stashed in offshore accounts/companies.

“There are flaws in the law, which needs to be addressed,” the FBR chief said. “The wealth statement does not require taxpayer to mention offshore assets. We are working on it and the recommendations would soon be forwarded to the government.”

He said the government would decide about the timeline for incorporating the joint-recommendations in the law. “It may be included in the next finance bill, or the government may move earlier.”

Khan also said large taxpayers unit surpassed the Rs1.0 trillion revenue collection mark, “which was a big achievement.”

“FBR was assigned a revenue collection target of Rs3.104 trillion (for 2015/16), and unlike the past years there has been no downward revision in this target,” he added. “We will achieve the target.”

Talking about the broadening of tax base, the FBR chief said the field offices are regularly conducting exercises to identify non-filers.

The apex tax authority is building a comprehensive database of frequent flyers, luxury car owners and property owners.

“We have identified a number of persons, who – based on the patterns of their spending - should be return-filers, but they are not; and they are being treated accordingly,” Khan said.

The FBR chief said customs is spending funds to improve the efficiency of its online system.

Technical glitches caused shutdown of Web-Based One Customs (WeBoc), online system for filing shipping details.

In April, the customs’ clearance of imports and exports remained suspended as its system came across some technical issues. In early March, the WeBOC system also stopped operating due to problems in the storage area network, bringing all the operations to the halt. 

Sources said there had been no clearance of import or export consignments through the system.

A tax official said then the system was going through a maintenance phase due to which the clearance through it slowed down.