Huge income tax evasion scandal revealed by FBR

Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) has exposed a massive income tax evasion case in Faisalabad on Wednesday. The new intelligence wing of the authority unearthed the scandal, which involved benami bank transactions, under which huge
taxable income was channeled in the hands of a low-paid employee through a local bank, who was not an existing tax payer. The motive of such transactions was to conceal the large amount of taxable income from the tax officers.

The initial findings of the FBR intelligence wing, the Inland Revenue Service (IRS), revealed that an amount of Rs. 339.966 million was deposited in the account of the low-grade employee in Faisalabad. Such abnormal transaction
was noticed by the authorities and subsequent enquiry proved that the owners of the amount have performed this illegal act to avoid tax payments to the FBR.

“The statement of the account holder show huge credit and debit entries,” said a senior official in the Federal Board of Revenue. The account was opened on the name of Mr Ghulam, who is a store keeper at the godown. The official
said it was too early to disclose the name of the actual owner of the account. “We are investigating the owners, who used the low-paid employee for holding the money in his account for them,” the officer said.

The account holder has also nominated a third person, instead of his sons, daughters or wife, which proved the factum of benami in the case. The FBR officials have also cited that two other accounts were also opened in the same
branch of the bank and witnesses of inter-bank transactions have been observed among these three accounts. This certainly provides evidence that these three account holders do have a kind of financial connection with each other.

The official said that investigation officer was probing the profile of the identified persons to unearth actual incomes, which were concealed to evade income tax. The FBR has also ordered investigating wing of IRS to conduct desk
audit of such account holders, where massive transactions took place but those people were not actually taxpayers.

Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of Pakistan is less than nine per cent and it all because richer people do not pay tax to its full amount. 

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Posted by Farhan Hameed on Dec 22 2011. Filed under Business, Pakistan. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry