By: Mehtab Haider
ISLAMABAD: The draft legislative bills for the tax amnesty schemes will authorise the National Database and Registration Authority (Nadra) and banks to accept declarations, registration tax, issue receipts and National Tax Numbers, show copies of the two drafts.
The name of first scheme is Investment Tax Scheme (ITS 2012) and the second scheme will be Tax Registration Enforcement Initiative 2012 (TREI 2012).
“Embarrassingly for the tax authorities, they could not get the bills tabled in the last session of the National Assembly as earlier committed by them,” said top FBR sources on Thursday. “Now it is expected that the next session of the lower house will be convened on December 3, 2012, in which the government will table the FBR’s schemes.”
As per the terms of the amnesty schemes approved by the federal cabinet, people availing of the same will be granted immunity under the Income Tax Ordinance, 2001, the Companies Ordinance of 1984, the National Accountability Ordinance, 1999, the Federal Investigation Agency Act of 1974 and the Foreign Exchange Ordinance, 2002 but not the Narcotics Substance Act of 1997 nor the Anti Terrorism Act of 1997.
The existing scheme of the tax laws provides a mechanism for bringing potential taxpayers into the tax net and to enforce compliance to the tax laws. However, in view of the massive non-reporting, the FBR proposed the provision of a one-time opportunity to unregistered persons and non-filers to regularize their tax affairs by adopting a simplified procedure;
The draft of the proposed law also states that the FBR may make a scheme of tax registration and enforcement initiative on payment of registration tax in respect of registered and unregistered non-filers.
The draft states that a person availing of the scheme shall not be liable to file any return for any previous tax year/s or pay any further tax, charge, levy, penalty or be subject to prosecution or any proceeding in respect of declaration made under the scheme.
Further, any claim for tax already paid, collected or deducted under the Income Tax Ordinance, 2001 shall not be admissible unless regular return of income is filed by the taxpayer and in such a case provisions of the scheme shall not apply.
The draft also explicitly defines “registration tax” as tax payable under the TERI-2012 scheme and the Income Tax Ordinance. Meanwhile, “registered non-filer” refers to any person who has either been allotted an NTN and has not filed income tax returns for three tax years out of any of the five completed tax years or has never filed an income tax return or has filed an income tax return for any of the tax years prior to five completed tax years. The draft also defines “unregistered non-filer” as someone who does not have an NTN or has never filed an income tax return.
