ISLAMABAD: Special Assi­stant to Prime Minister on Revenue Haroon Akhtar Khan on Wednesday came to the rescue of the new tax amnesty scheme and stressed that no immunity is available for whitening of proceeds or assets derived from the commission of a criminal offence.

Talking to media after launching the Restaurant Information Management System (RIMS), Mr Khan — who was conspicuously missing from the scene since the announcement of the scheme — spoke for the first time publicly in favour of the tax amnesty and sought to allay concerns being raised domestically and internationally against the scheme.

The Foreign Assets Ordinance and Domestic Assets Ordinance have been given overriding effect to other laws for the time being in force. However, it was mentioned that these ordinances will not apply to any proceeds or assets that are involved in or derived from the commission of a criminal offence.

Experts pointed out that specific laws including Narcotic Substance Act, 1947 and Anti Terrorist Act 1997 were not mentioned in these ordinances from which no immunity exists.

The special assistant said concerns raised by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) were already addressed by excluding criminal offences from the amnesty scheme.

Counting the expected outcome of the scheme, Mr Khan said the government will generate $5 billion to $10bn. “This amount will help us to control the rising current account deficit and avoid approaching any international donor for a bailout package.”

On the other hand, the special assistant said, the failure of the scheme will be due to the negative propaganda domestically or Pakistanis not having stashed money into their foreign accounts.

However, he did not over rule the possibility that new government has the power to scrap tax amnesty scheme.

Asked why Federal Board of Revenue was not supporting the scheme, the special assistant denied the reports. He said the FBR chairman was fully supporting the scheme.

He admitted that the FBR had a different point but since the announcement it is now fully support it.

The special assistant hinted raise in tax rates for non-filers. The tax filers would be facilitated in the next budget.

RIMS launched

The FBR has launched RIMS, a tech-based solution that enables monitoring of sales in real time basis thus reducing the human interface and bringing transparency in the tax collection process.

The prime objective of web-based RIMS is to facilitate taxpayers by relying on modern techniques to tap the difference between current and potential collection.

It is appreciable that RIMS has so far been successfully installed in 80 plus renowned restaurants operating in the federal capital and further implementation in remaining restaurants is in process.

FBR is considering announcing a scheme for luring customers to get receipts from restaurants after paying tax on service.

Published in Dawn, April 12th, 2018