OSPs deposit $7.5 billion in banks

The National Assembly’s Standing Committee on Finance has showed dissatisfaction over the FBR’s performance to bring people into the tax system out of total 152,000 bank account details received from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and summoned FBR Chairman Shabbar Zaidi in next meeting.

Under automatic exchange of information, the FBR informed the NA panel that they received data from 28 countries regarding 152,000 Overseas Pakistanis (OSPs) having deposit of $7.5 billion into their bank accounts. So far no progress has been made to bring such people into the tax net. The NA panel directed that the FBR chairman should brief the committee on automatic exchange of information from OECD mechanism in its next meeting.

The meeting also deferred approval of Foreign Exchange Regulation Amendment and Money Laundering Amendment Bill 2019 owing to absence of Finance Ministry officials.

The committee held its meeting under the chairmanship of Asad Umar in which the FBR high-ups said that notices were sent out to those who own $0.5 million into their bank accounts. “We sent notices to 650 individuals who own $4.5 billion into their accounts out of which 60 per cent had availed the last amnesty scheme during the last PML-N government,” FBR’s Member IRS Hamid Ateeq Sarwar told the NA panel.

Asad Umar said that the government should take the NA committee seriously. He said the amnesty scheme was announced with delay. On latest asset declaration scheme, the FBR member said that the FBR had received total 119,595 declarations till midnight of July 3 and tax amount of Rs55 billion was netted.

News Network International