KARACHI: Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) Tuesday conducted a seminar on Common Reporting Standard for Automatic Exchange of Information (AEoI).
The seminar was conducted by the officials of OECD’s Global Forum on Transparency and Exchange of Information for Tax Purposes in auditorium of Old Customs, Karachi.
The OECD team comprised of Donal Godfrey, Deputy Head of Global Forum Secretariat and Lloyd Garrichinho, Analyst in the Global Forum.
The event was arranged for facilitation and education of the financial industry so that maximum representatives of the industry can benefit from the expertise of the OECD team members.
Pakistan has signed and ratified the Multilateral Convention on Mutual Administrative Assistance in Tax Matters in 2016 and has also taken up a Pilot Project on Automatic Exchange of Information with the approval of Finance Minister with the assistance of the Global Forum and United Kingdom. As Pakistan intends to start its first exchange of information soon, therefore, the financial sector is required to start its due diligence process from July 1, 2017. Federal Board of Revenue has already notified Common Reporting Standard (CRS) Rules for the purpose.
Mohammad Iqbal, Chief (International Taxes), Irfan Ali, Executive Director SBP and Khalida Habib from SECP were also on the panel for the seminar. The Chief Commissioners of RTOs and LTUs, Director General of Customs Training Academy, Collectors of Customs and other senior FBR officers also attended the seminar. Other participants included officers from SBP, SECP, and representatives of financial sector from banking and non-banking sector in a large number.
The event commenced with opening remarks by Mohammad Iqbal, Chief (International Taxes) and Irfan Ali, Executive Director of SBP. The participants were communicated the messages of Haroon Akhtar Khan, Special Assistant to the Prime Minister on Revenue and Dr Muhammad Irshad, FBR Chairman, apprising them of the steps taken by FBR so far and expressing strong commitment of FBR to the automatic exchange of information.
The purpose of the seminar was to guide and address to the queries of the stakeholders about implementation of CRS Rules and automatic exchange of information.
Donal Godfrey and Llyod Garrochinho made detailed presentations on CRS Rules. The participants raised different questions and sought clarification on issues pertaining to CRS and AEOI which were responded by the visiting delegation. The event was concluded with words of thanks by FBR representatives to all participants and the OECD delegation and also appreciated the active participation of the financial industry in the seminar.
The Director General DGTR (Customs) and Collector (Preventive) Customs were also thanked for their arrangements for the seminar.
