Huge tax evasion by Multan beverage firm employee detected

ISLAMABAD: The Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) has traced out a case of an interesting Benami account where an employee of multinational beverage company based in Multan was allegedly found involved in maintaining billions of rupees bank accounts without having an apparent source of income.

Details available with The News reveal that on the basis of credible information, Directorate of Intelligence & Investigation, Inland Revenues (I&I-IR), Multan initiated an investigations against an employee of beverage outfit located in Multan. The name of the employee is Aamir Hameed.

According to information, the multinational beverage company has been allegedly involved in evasion of tax and the style adopted to evade tax is to channel a huge portion of its receipts from various sources through the bank accounts of its employees.

One of the employees having an annual salary of Rs1,158,872 (around Rs 1.1 million on per annum basis) and no other source of income was selected to start the investigation with and his tax record along with his bank accounts was scrutinised.

It was found that during tax years 2011 to 2015 Rs1.789 billion were credited in his accounts. Consequently, the said employee was called on 22-09-2016 under section 176 of the Income Tax Ordinance to bear witness regarding his accounts.

He submitted his, year-wise, total receipts amounting to Rs30.641 million during tax years 2011 to 2014. It was found that the above figures ale almost the same as declared in his Income Tax Returns except for Tax Year 2013, where he has not filed any return.

However, he failed to explain the sources of remaining receipts of Rs1.75 billion. After investigating into the matter, it was found that the employee has no plausible source for these huge transactions and the transacting beyond means or lawful source renders the transaction “Suspicious Transaction”.

Keeping in view the sources of the employee and cycle of unlawful money in his accounts, the I&I-IR investigators are looking into the sources of such huge amount in the bank accounts of a low paid employee.

It can be assumed that the beverage concern is parking its concealed money in his employee’s bank accounts, i.e., benami accounts and that his employee is a party to this entire venture. Accordingly, investigation reports were sent to RTO, Multan where proceedings in respect of the employee for the Tax Years 2011, 2012, 2013 and 2014 have been finalised resulting in creation of tax demand amounting to Rs819.6 million.

This tax demand includes Rs410.8 million of Income Tax and Rs408.9 million of penalty.The Directorate General of Intelligence & Investigations-IR also initiated the proceedings under section 203 of Income Tax Ordinance, 2001 to lodge FIR against tax evaders.

Khawaja Tanveer Ahmed, the Director General Intelligence & Investigations-IR highly praised the efforts of officers and the staff involved in the investigations.

This correspondent contacted the multinational beverage company’s office located in Multan and talk to one of his employee who is dealing in tax matters to get response but got no reply till filing of this report.