ISLAMABAD: In bid to bring back money, the government is set to introduce tax amnesty scheme for Pakistanis abroad with minimum tax rate of 3 to 5 percent, which would help collect $4 to $6 billion.
According to sources, the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) has already prepared a draft of the proposed tax amnesty scheme, which would provide Pakistanis legal protection from the National Accountability Bureau (NAB), Anti-Money Laundering (AML) laws and reversal of any such scheme.
However, the government needs constitutional guarantee from Parliament, which seems difficult preposition because the government lacks majority in the Senate.
The sources said that the draft policy prepared by Tax Implementation Reform Commission (TIRC) led by Masood Naqvi played key role in preparation of draft of this amnesty scheme under which two different tax rates were proposed who would bring back their assets after disposing of and their tax rates would be minimal in the range of 2 to 3 percent. But the tax rate proposed on higher side for those who would declare their assets before the tax authorities here in Pakistan and their rates would be higher over 5 percent.
The draft of proposed scheme, the sources said, has been shared with Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi and fine tuning of the scheme is required for which the premier is expected to convene another important meeting in first half of January 2018.
The tax authorities believe that the global environment especially in the aftermath of joining OECD forum by Pakistan paved the way for introducing such an amnesty scheme because there was increasing demand from the business community to provide an opportunity for regularising foreign assets abroad.
