Ishfaq A Mughal
While taking a bold step, the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) has decided to serve notices to 300 parliamentarians including federal ministers for not filing income tax returns, as revealed in a first-of-its-kind report.
FBR Chairman Ali Arshad Hakeem said the FBR was already in the process of sending notices to over 188,000 people identified as tax evaders, which also included parliamentarians. He added that tax officials would treat the report, titled Representation without Taxation, as an additional source of information in this regard.
According to the Income Tax Ordinance 2001, anyone whose annual income is Rs500,000 or above is liable to file income tax returns, irrespective of the source of income.
Another official said that the FBR would ask the non-filers to deposit a penalty of Rs5,000 and file the tax returns within the stipulated time.
While commenting on the report, he said as far as the data of non-filers is concerned, there was no mismatch between the information given in the report and the FBR’s data but added that in many cases the information regarding tax paid by the parliamentarians was not accurate.
The report affirms the deep-held belief that the political class is not only the biggest hurdle in broadening an extremely narrow tax base but also one that hates to pay taxes.
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