President promulgates ordinance to reduce withholding tax rate to 0.3%

Once issued, the ordinance will come into effect from July 11, 2015

ISLAMABAD: President Mamnoon Hussain, on the advice of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, promulgated an ordinance late on Saturday evening which would halve the withholding tax rate to 0.3% from 0.6%, Express News reported.

The ordinance was issued after Finance Minister Ishaq Dar and traders, businessmen agreed on a middle ground on the withholding tax rate issue.

Earlier on Saturday, in a meeting with Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif at the PM House in Islamabad, Dar had solicited an in-principle approval from the prime minister for issuing an ordinance to institute the adjustment of withholding tax.

Subsequently, an advice on issuing an ordinance on the subject was sent to the President.

The agreement reached on July 9 was viewed as a win-win situation as traders agreed to come into the tax-net in return for getting 0.3% reduction in the rate besides availing a three-month window to file the income tax return.

“It has been unanimously decided that the government will halve the withholding tax rate to 0.3% till September 30,” Finance Minister Ishaq Dar announced on Thursday. The government will promulgate an ordinance in the next 48 hours to give effect to the changes.