Family petitions: PHC issues stay order against income support levy tax

PESHAWAR:

A stay order was issued by the Peshawar High Court (PHC) on Thursday against the collection of income support levy taken by the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR).

The court also asked the board for a full report on it. The 0.5% tax is imposed on income of individuals who earn more than one million rupees a month.

A single-member bench of Justice Nisar Hussain Khan was informed by the petitioner’s counsel, Advocate Rehman Shah, that his clients, Salim, Humayun Saifullah and their family, were paying regular tax to the FBR and had their own National Tax Numbers. Shah added the court, however, had issued stay orders in other family member’s petitions.



The advocate claimed his clients were paying their taxes, but this year, under the Income Support Levy Act of 2013, they were being asked to pay 0.5% more.

Justice Khan said the stay order issued on the other petitions expired on December 16 and the advocate should have reached the court earlier. After the expiration, the petitioner is liable to penalty.

Advocate Shah replied that if the stay order was not extended, then his client would have to pay a 16% surcharge in addition to the levy tax. He added the amount was too huge so the stay order should be extended.

After hearing the arguments, the judge issued a stay order till January 7 and stopped the FBR from collecting the levy tax from the Saifullah family.

Early retirement

In a separate case, Justice Khan also sought a report from the Ministry of State and Frontier Regions and Khyber Agency’s political agent over the forced retirement of a naib subidar. This stopped officials from taking any further action against the petitioner.



Advocate Aminur Rehman informed the court his client Amjid Ali had been serving as a naib subidar in the agency and was 39 years old. The retirement requirement age for the post is 55. Rehman claimed that Ali had received an order from the political administration to retire from December 31. He added the administration had told his client he was temporarily promoted to the post of naib subidar from that of a hawaldar. Rehman claimed that even if his client was being forced to retire from that, then the retirement requirement age for a hawaldar was 43.

The court heard the preliminary arguments, accepted a writ petition and sought reports from the political agent and ministry.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 27^th, 2013.