KARACHI: The Federal Board of Revenue is taking strict measure against tax defaulters as the current fiscal year is going to end soon. On the other hand, the FBR has started freezing bank accounts of defaulting persons as well as companies. Last year, the FBR also took the same action and froze bank accounts of thousands of defaulting persons and companies.
A well-informed source told this scribe that on January 24, 2014, the FBR initiated action against 40 ship breaking companies who were involved in evading sales tax amounting to billions of rupees. The FBR used its legal channels to assess the bank accounts of the company and recovered a huge amount from their bank accounts.
On June 20, 2014, the FBR also served a notice on renowned national cricketer Umer Akmal for the recovery of outstanding tax amounting to Rs 3,600,000. It is quite interesting that on first instance Umer Akmal ignored the notice and then RTO ordered authorities to freeze the bank account of Umer Akmal. The same case was repeated in October 2014 with national cricketers Misbahul Haq and Azhar Ali as their bank accounts were frozen. The FBR authorities found that Mishbahul Haq is defaulter of 4,500,000, while Azhar Ali is defaulter of Rs 1,500,000.
Sources further disclosed that the Directorate of Broadening of Tax Base of the FBR took strict measures against tax defaulters last year. The department froze the bank accounts of 278 persons who despite living a luxury life were avoiding tax. The Tax Broadening Department is working round the clock under the supervision of Rehmatullah Wazir, and the officials were coordinating with motor vehicles authorities, car manufacturers and electricity distributing companies to gain required information.
