Tax amnesty scheme

The Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) has started cracking down on benami property holders and attached billions of rupees in assets as the PTI government’s tax amnesty scheme approached its deadline. The move came after Prime Minister Imran Khan issued directions to FBR Chairman Shabbar Zaidi to begin pursuing the holders of benami assets. Oddly enough, reports also suggest that the prime minister asked the FBR not to harass the business community or industrialists.

That begs the question: how many billionaire school teachers and milkmen are there in the country? Because one thing remains abundantly clear — planners in Naya Pakistan, like Purana Pakistan, will not tax the hands that fund them. Much of the agriculture sector remains heavily subsidised and untaxed, despite most of the richest Pakistanis — both declared and undeclared — having minted their millions and billions in agriculture. This should not be a huge surprise, considering that every major party is financed by agriculturists, and many of the most powerful ‘farmers’ have seats, spouses, or frontmen in Parliament.

Interestingly, with the amnesty period expiring, it has now been revealed that the PTI government has stopped chasing people who have stashed around $7.5 billion in 152,000 offshore bank accounts and whose names have been shared with Pakistan by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). The reason claimed was to give them a chance to avail the amnesty scheme before the government went on the offensive. But if this was the case, the amnesty cannot be considered a success.

Only 130,000 or so people availed the scheme and paid just Rs60 billion in taxes. Of the total declarations filed, nearly 80% were related to domestic assets. For comparison, the last tax amnesty scheme, offered by the PML-N government, had been availed by 83,000 people who paid Rs124 billion in taxes. Couple this with the fact that the initial raids on benami assets — which were ostensibly tied to the end of the amnesty scheme — almost universally seem to be directed at politicians, so doubts are again raised over the point of the scheme.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 6^th, 2019.

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