KARACHI: The Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) has started taking legal proceedings against Pakistanis in the United Kingdom who missed to avail tax amnesty scheme.
The exchange of information cell of the FBR had issued notices to around 500 individuals owning properties in UK after the amnesty scheme expired on July 31.
Sources said that around 80 percent of them responded to the notices by August 31. “Most of the notice recipients either declared their assets or whitened them under the amnesty scheme.”
The four-month amnesty scheme gave residents one-off tax benefits for repatriating undeclared local liquid assets with a five percent penalty, undeclared foreign liquid assets with a two percent penalty (if repatriated, or a five percent penalty if remaining abroad or in foreign currencies), and undeclared fixed assets – whether held locally or abroad – with a three percent penalty.
FBR collected Rs122 billion in revenue, as around 70,000 declarations of local and foreign assets were made under the scheme.
The FBR will probe into exports receipts of the identified people to determine the transfer of undeclared money. People with knowledge of the matter said foreign trade is used as an effective tool for huge quantum of money laundering. They said manufactures of various goods, especially textile, pretend importing stuffs to send money abroad and whiten the illegal money through export receipts.
Sources said tax authorities are mulling to take help from the State Bank of Pakistan to reckon foreign trade details.
The last government empowered the FBR to initiate proceedings against illegal assets discovered anytime in the past 70 years. Previously, there was a bar of five years.
