The senior officials in the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) and the Ministry of Finance confirmed that the central bank had proposed the amnesty scheme. But in recent past, the IMF looked the other way when Pakistan gave a tax amnesty scheme to the construction sector. The IMF had barred Pakistan from giving further tax amnesty scheme during the currency of the IMF programme after the PTI government gave a tax amnesty scheme in May last year to allow people to declare their ill-gotten and black money. In this background, the central bank was paddling the third tax amnesty scheme. Last year, Asad Umar, the former finance minister had remarked that FBR could have recovered 70% of the assets including penalties but the FBR settled it at 2-4% by giving tax amnesty scheme.

Source: The Express Tribune October 25, 2020 03:22 UTC