ISLAMABAD: Finance Minister Ishaq Dar and Chairman Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) Nisar Muhammad Khan on Thursday aptly defended the government’s decision of levying 0.3 percent withholding tax on bank transactions of Rs 50,000 made by non filers before the National Assembly Standing Committee on Finance.
Both expressed their strong determination to resolve the issue within next few days, assuring the committee that traders and business community would benefit from government’s policy of WHT on bank transactions.
“Around one hundred thousand new filers have been inducted to the tax net since the imposition of WHT on bank transactions and it has increased the number of filers higher than one million,” they apprised the committee.
Dar said that government wanted to facilitate traders in acceleration of business activities but traders must also pay tax to the government on reciprocal basis. In the ongoing sessions with business community representatives, the other side agreed on a number of occasions, however, later they presented some different demands which were not likely to be met by the government” he added.
Shedding light on these demands, he said that traders wanted whitening of their current capital as well as no questioning source of their previous assets and it was not possible for government to come up to their demands because WHT was not an amnesty scheme.
Nisar Muhammad Khan, told the committee that an revenue of Rs 8 billion had been collected from 0.3% WHT on bank transactions so far and approximate tune of revenue from this practice would be Rs 18 billion.
Committee proposed lowering the WHT ratio from 0.3% to 0.2% on bank transactions by non-filers for a specific period of three or four months to save business community from a sudden shock. However, both the Dar and Nisar urged the committee to avoid making any strong recommendation, which could provide a way of tax pilferage to the business community. At this committee did not press on its recommendation.
