20000419

Tax Bar demands

changes in Tax

Amnesty Scheme

WIRASAT HUSSNAIN

KARACHI: The President of the All Pakistan Tax Bar Association, Z H Jafri, said on Tuesday the powers delegated to tax officials to reject entire declarations, filed under Tax Amnesty Scheme, on grounds of anomalies, should be withdrawn forthwith.

He said instead of empowering tax officials to reject the entire declaration under TAS, there should be provision for accepting the declaration to the extent it covered the assets of an applicant. If there was any concealment or suppression of facts, the case would always be reopened under the existing provisions of income tax laws.

Jafri said in the event of opening of the cases where part of the assets were shown, it would be advisable to restrict all actions to the extent of concealment and there should not be total rejection of a declaration under the TAS.

He said the last date for filing returns under the TAS should be extended from April 30 to June 30. "During the two months of extension, the government should try to educate people to avail of the TAS by declaring their assets and paying only 10 percent as tax. People want to whiten their wealth one way or the other. It is now up to the government to publicise the scheme and convince people to avail of the scheme. They should be told that the scheme is to facilitate them and not to trap them for future exploitation."

Jafri said that a general body meeting of the APTBA in Multan, where 17 TBAs participated, identified nine areas for removal of obstacles in the way of successful implementation of the TAS and demanded of the finance minister to look into it. Following are the identified bottlenecks:

1) powers delegated to tax authorities to reject the declarations up to June 30, 2005;

2) paragraphs 9, 10 and 11 should be deleted as these paragraphs will lead to abuse of discretionary powers by the department;

3) the effect of cut off date should be continued to offset black money to the extent of declaration;

4) categorical assurance that no penal provisions of Income Tax Ordinance 1979, Wealth Tax Act 1963 will be invoked in respect of the declaration;

5) effective publicity highlighting the benefits and salient features of the declaration;

6) shortage of time for filing the declarations;

7) assurance that the wealth tax exemption will also be available on the conversion of declared assets;

8) only those cases before the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) should be excluded from amnesty where proceedings have been initiated.

9) paragraph 13 should be suitably amended to rationalise it.