ISLAMABAD: The federal government may promulgate a presidential ordinance to hand over record of existing three million taxpayers to the National Database and Registration Authority (NADRA) in a bid to increase tax collection, which may severely compromise privacy of the people.
The law that governs NADRA – the body set up to only maintain citizens’ database – does not permit the authority to indulge into the function of enhancing tax collection, which remains the sole job of the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR).
Sources in NADRA said that the FBR and NADRA were collaborating to make a legal amendment to the Income Tax Ordinance to relax a clause that barred the FBR from sharing information of income tax return filers with a third party.
They added a new amendment had been drafted to change the existing Section 216(3) to make room for sharing the income tax statement and wealth statement of taxpayers with NADRA.
“The Artificial Intelligence engine would determine tax liabilities based on data of registered and unregistered persons and standard deviations would be minimum only when filers and non-filers data is available for analysis,” said NADRA Chairman Tariq Malik while talking to The Express Tribune.
He vowed to protect the taxpayers’ data from misuse, saying the data would be expunged from the NADRA system after completing the exercise.
NADRA sources revealed that in 2019 the FBR had discreetly handed over the tax record of income tax return filers for the period 2014 to 2018 to NADRA. But the tax machinery was now reluctant to do it again, the sources added.
In order to address the concerns of the FBR, the government has now prepared a draft presidential ordinance, said the sources. The ordinance may also fix some of the omissions in the Finance Act that the National Assembly approved last month, including banking sector amendments.
