ISLAMABAD: The Anti-Money Laundering (AML) cell of the Intelligence & Investigation-Inland Revenue has started investigations against the identified people, who put assets worth millions of rupees in the gift category while filing their returns.
Under the existing laws, gifts are exempt from taxes and a large number of individuals with high net worth are using the option as a safe means of transferring incomes, assets and wealth without contributing to the national revenue.
According to the official sources, as many as 2,785 people might have laundered money by declaring it “gifts” received from their parents, siblings or spouses, who were either out of the tax net or had no known source of income.
About Rs102 billion were laundered during the ongoing fiscal year by describing the money as “gift”. The cases involving money laundering through “gift back arrangements” were unearthed during scrutiny of tax returns filed by the wealthy individuals last year. It was found that income was declared in many returns, but taxes paid on the incomes were nominal.
The data collected by the AML cell revealed that 2,785 rich individuals declared receipt of gifts worth Rs102bn in their wealth statements in the tax year 2016. In three of the cases, individuals declared gifts of Rs1 billion and above, with the biggest amount of gift received being Rs1.7 billion.
As many as eight individuals declared gifts worth between Rs1 billion and Rs500 million.
In the third category, 97 individuals declared gifts worth between Rs500m and Rs200m. Likewise, 97 people declared having received gifts worth Rs200m to Rs100m, while 280 individuals declared gifts of between Rs100m and Rs50m in their wealth statements. A total of 2,348 people declared gifts worth Rs50m to Rs10m.
A tax official said the AML cell was now scrutinising these cases to determine whether the expensive gifts came from legitimate sources or not.
