ISLAMABAD: Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) has given a list of 10,000 companies to the Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan (SECP) that have not filed their income tax returns yet.
Sources said that only 15,000 out of over 64,000 registered companies filed income tax returns by the last date of December 31, 2014. The figure was also lower than the previous year when 24,000 companies filed tax returns.
According to an SECP official, the commission would first examine the record of 100 firms. It would also write to the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) to unearth bank accounts of those companies that did not file income tax returns.
SECP’s newly appointed Chairman, Hijazi, said that the Easy Exit Scheme offered by the SECP to dormant companies in the past had been used to dodge the tax net. He said many companies were deleted from the database but they were still doing business in the country. The SECP would review the exit scheme, he added.
FBR Spokesman Shahid Hussain Asad said that the Board was in the process of sending notices to those individuals and companies that filed income tax returns electronically in the preceding year but did not submit the returns for 2014.
He said that only 11,000 out of 77,000 people, who had been served notices, had submitted their e returns online.
The spokesman said 29,000 returns were in the pipeline and after that the FBR would start issuing notices to those companies that did not file the returns for last year.
The FBR does not have powers to slap stringent penalties for failure to file tax returns. Section 182 of the Income Tax Ordinance 2001 allows the FBR to impose a penalty of 0.1% of payable tax for each day of delay. It can impose a maximum penalty of 50% of payable tax on late filing of returns.
