PESHAWAR, Oct 9: After remaining pending for almost a decade, the Peshawar High Court on Tuesday dismissed two appeals of former federal minister Aftab Ahmad Sherpao seeking exemption from payment of wealth tax on his foreign currency accounts in Switzerland.

A two-member bench comprising Justice Miftauddin Khan and Mrs Justice Irshad Qaiser pronounced a short order after completion of arguments by the counsels appearing for income tax department and Mr Sherpao, who is an MNA and chief of his own faction of PPP.

Through the said two appeals, Mr Sherpao had challenged the decisions of subordinate forums directing him to pay wealth tax to the tune of around Rs7.2 million on his foreign currency account of 500,000 pound sterling. The assessments were made for the year 1997-98 and 1998-99.

The high court had stayed the recovery of the wealth tax around a decade ago and since then the appeals continued to linger on due to one reason or another.

The said money was deposited in Citibank, Rawalpindi till June 30, 1996, when Mr Sherpao was the chief minister of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Later, the money was transferred to UK and subsequently to a bank in Switzerland.

The controversial wealth tax was first assessed by the income tax assessment officer early in 1999 after Mr Sherpao had conceded in a press conference on Dec 25, 1998, that he possessed a foreign currency account in Switzerland. The assessment officer imposed the tax for the years 1996-97, 1997-98 and 1998-99, stating that the foreign currency accounts were not exempted from wealth tax.

Later, the commissioner income tax declared that the said money was exempted from wealth tax for the year 1996-97 as the account was maintained in the country and not abroad, whereas the tax for rest of the two years was maintained. The same decision was maintained by the appellate tribunal, which was challenged by Mr Sherpao.

The petitioner’s counsel contended that the income tax assessment officer had deleted that account while assessing income tax of the petitioner, but while making assessment of his wealth tax the same account was included in the wealth of the petitioner.

He argued that the subordinate forums had not touched the point regarding the exemption of foreign currency account from the levy of wealth tax. He added that under section 6 of the Economic Reforms Act (Act No XII) of 1992 the foreign currency accounts enjoyed complete exemption from all sorts of taxes.

Advocate Eid Mohammad Khattak appeared for the income tax department argued that the appellate tribunal had addressed all the major issues in the case. He contended that under the wealth tax law the net wealth of an individual included all the assets which were located in the country as well as abroad.

Mr Khattak argued that the said account was not mentioned by the appellant while declaring his net wealth and had in fact concealed it.