FBR to make data of account holders public from June 21

ISLAMABAD: In a major development, the FBR has received details of millions of account holders on account of withholding statement and those accounts where deposit amount is more than Rs0.5 million in a bid to broaden the tax base.

The FBR has decided to make this data public from June 21, 2019, where the individual can check through online system that what kind of information FBR possessed about his/her accounts. It’s basically about withholding tax deduction and about benami accounts possessing more than Rs0.5 million till the date of 31-12-2017.

“We will ensure secrecy of bank accounts. We will provide online access to individuals for checking details possessed by the FBR with certain password so that the people could ascertain that the FBR is full of information so they had last chance to declare their income/assets till June 30 through amnesty scheme,” top FBR officials told The News Monday.

Banking data of withholding statement and deposits of more than Rs0.5 million is related to banking accounts till 31-12-2017. The deposits of 0.5 million is related to Benami accounts so people can access data to ascertain details of information in possession of the FBR.

The banks provided data about millions of accounts from banks in shape of computerised discs. The banking data has been shared with Pakistan Revenue Authority Limited (PRAL). Now the FBR will scrutinise the data in a bid to broaden the tax base.

The withholding statement shows the deduction by the banks under different clauses of withholding taxes which will show that the taxpayers and non-taxpayers made billions of rupees transactions but never bothered to declare their actual income before the tax authorities. The matching of data will identify thousands of non- filers or under filers in days to come.

“Yes we have received details of bank accounts on account of withholding statement probably in thousands of numbers because I have not yet checked total numbers of account details. Each bank separately shared its data with us,” the FBR Chairman Shahbar Zaidi told The News.

However, the FBR officials said Nadra was going to launch sharing of information available with the government about taxpayers by charging Rs500 per person and the FBR would also intend to launch its own information from their own portal in days to come to convince the people that the government possessed data so they should come forward to avail the last chance of tax amnesty.

“There is huge potential as one individual declared property assets and bank accounts valuing $450,000,” said the official and added that there were possibilities of big ticket items in case of affluent segments of the society but under confidentiality laws the FBR could not mention their names.