FBR warns action against ‘laggard’ asset declarants

KARACHI: The Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) on Tuesday warned people who opted for disclosure of concealed assets under the last year’s tax amnesty scheme to clear their dues in order to save from strict penalties as the concession is going to end by June-end.

“In case of non-payment of tax and default surcharge by the due date, declaration filed under the scheme will become void and any tax and default surcharge that has been paid will not be refunded,” the FBR said in a statement.

In May last year, the government promulgated the Assets Declaration Ordinance 2019 under which any person might make a declaration in respect of undisclosed assets, expenditures, sales and benami assets. Whilst the previous scheme only allowed individuals who were citizens of Pakistan to file the declarations, the ordinance does not make any such restriction.

Under the assets declaration scheme, the FBR allows declaration with payment of reduced rate of tax and without default surcharge till June 30, 2019. Declarants could clear dues in four different timelines with default surcharges.

The first payment deadline was due on September 30 last year with 10 percent default surcharge. The second deadline, with 20 percent default surcharge, was on December 31. The third one, with 30 percent default surcharge, was due on March 31 and the final deadline is June 30 only for those who pay 40 percent default surcharge.

The FBR said there would be no further extension in the deadline and afterwards, “proceedings will be initiated for undisclosed assets, expenditure and sales which may culminate to taxes and penalties amounting to 80 percent of the value of assets in addition to proceedings under various other laws”.

Under the tax amnesty scheme, all assets except domestic immovable properties can be declared with 4 percent tax rate, domestic immovable properties draw 1.5 percent tax, un-repatriated foreign liquid assets bear 6 percent, unexplained expenditures invoke 4 percent and undisclosed sales bear 2 percent tax rate.

The law was necessitated to provide an opportunity to people to declare benami assets – those whose ownership has been falsely disclosed – something that was prohibited under the Benami Transactions (Prohibition) Act, 2017.

The FBR didn’t update the figures related to the declarations under the assets declaration scheme, the previous amnesty introduced during the last government recorded total 82,889 declarations with paid tax amount of Rs124.8 billion that means each declaration on an average contributed around Rs1.4 million as tax to the national kitty.