Unisame proposes crackdown on tax evaders

KARACHI: The president of the Union of Small and Medium Enterprises (Unisame) said on Saturday that the federal government should ask the chambers of commerce and industries and trade associations to require membership applicants to furnish their national tax numbers (NTN) with their applications.
At the same time, applicants should be required to attach copies of their income tax returns when they apply for renewal of their memberships, a press release from Unisame reported Zulfikar Thaver as saying. He explained that this would make it certain that all members of Pakistan’s chambers and commerce and trade association filed their tax returns regularly.
Thaver expressed surprise that the Federation of Pakistan Chamber of Commerce and Industry (FPCCI) failed to make this suggestion to the Finance Minister Ishaq Dar.
He said that since all SME importers, exporters, traders manufacturers and service providers are filers of income tax, Unisame has no issues with the government on this point. He added that all shopkeepers have been directed to display their NTNs on their premises.
He went on to say that those who are not obliged to file income-tax returns, because their incomes are less than Rs400,000, should also be made exempt from paying the 0.3-percent withholding tax.
Thaver noted that, since they are exempt from taxation, earners deriving their incomes from agriculture are not filing tax returns.
But he said the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) can demand from them documents related to their landholdings, as well as papers related to the provincial levies paid by them, as evidence of their ownership of their lands. Unless this is done, he added, tax defaulters—including those deriving only small portions of their incomes from agriculture and the bulk from undeclared sources—could claim that their income is derived from agriculture as a way of avoiding income tax payment.
He said the FBR could discourage tax evasion by seeking information on exactly where many taxable individuals are drawing there incomes from.
On the subject of “genuine non-filers,” Thaver asked the FBR to investigate as to how far such people’s grievances are acceptable and what difficulties these people are facing.
However, Thaver emphasised, Unisame has no sympathy for those who refuse to file their returns when they are under legal obligation to do so.
He asked the Finance Minister to look into the matter of individuals possessing undeclared amounts of money and buying large properties with that money without being questioned or investigated.