In a major development, the government has deleted section 198 of the Income Tax Ordinance of 2001 to give NAB access to the data of the taxpayers. “Section 198 shall be omitted and shall always be deemed to have been so omitted since the commencement of the Income Tax Ordinance, 2001”, according to the ordinance. The step had been taken to broaden the narrow tax base comprising only three million income tax return filers, after all previous efforts and policy actions failed to yield the desired results. Giving NADRA accessThe government has included a new section 175B in the Income Tax Ordinance to hand over all data of existing as well as non-existing taxpayers to Nadra to broaden the tax base. Sources revealed that in 2019, FBR had discreetly handed over the tax record of income tax return filers for the period 2014 to 2018 to Nadra.

Source: The Express Tribune September 17, 2021 05:11 UTC