The Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) has issued notices to around 115,340 unregistered persons under Section 114 of Income Tax Ordinance, 2001 across the country. According to sources, the board has obtained financial details of around 115,340 unregistered persons and these individuals, who made huge banking transactions, owned luxurious vehicles and properties, remained non-filers in last financial year.
Keeping the said in view, the FBR has issued notices under Section 114 of Income Tax Ordinance, 2001 in order to persuade them to e-file income tax returns for Tax Year 2018-19, sources said and added that the board had complete financial details of these individuals related to bank accounts, vehicles and properties and if they did not comply with the notices and remained unable to enroll themselves with tax system, forceful measures would be taken to bring them into the tax net.
Replying to a question, sources said that around 20,000 notices have only been issued in Karachi while 14,700 in Lahore, 2,271 in Abbottabad, 5,480 in Bahawalpur, 6,170 in Faisalabad, 3,770 in Gujranwala, 5,980 in Hyderabad, 2,100 in Islamabad, 10,150 in Multan, 8,900 in Peshawar, 7,000 in Quetta, 5,520 in Sargodha, 7,600 in Sialkot, 4,800 in Sukkur, 8 in Sahiwal and one notice was served at FBR-HQ.
Sources said that the board had adopted zero-tolerance policy for broadening of tax base (BTB) and added that BTB unit Karachi has recently issued 250,000 notices on the basis of the data obtained from power and gas companies.
They said that the zone had initiated this massive exercise on the basis of the data of commercial and industrial consumers of power and gas companies and found such myriad number of unregistered power and gas consumers, having commercial and industrial power and gas connections. Furthermore, they said that notices were issued under section 176 of Income Tax Ordinance, 2001 to 250000 industrial and commercial power and gas connection holders against their billings for the month of July 2019, of which around 6000 notices were issued to unregistered gas consumers while rest of the notices were released to unregistered power consumers.