A meeting of the National Assembly Standing Committee on Finance was held in Islamabad on Friday under the chairmanship of Naveed Qamar.
During the meeting, the NA body opposed the Federal Board of Revenue’s move to seek access to Pakistanis ‘ bank accounts data.
Member of the Committee Sharmila Farooqi said, “I believe this data will be used for wrong purposes.”
FBR Member Hamid Atiq Sarwar said that taxpayers’ data is with the State Bank of Pakistan. “We will only review the returns,” he added.
He said that FBR will detect banking transactions of Pakistanis. Member Committee Javed Hanif said that the issue of obtaining data was settled yesterday.
Director-General of Tax Policy Najeeb Memon said that if a huge amount is deposited in someone’s bank account, then we can obtain its details. He said that if the banks summon the taxpayers, then there will be human interference. He suggested that this issue should be integrated with the faceless system to ensure transparency.
The members of the committee opposed the suggestions to amend the finance bill in a bid to obtain taxpayers’ data.
Later, the committee rejected the proposal of the Federal Board of Revenue and barred the FBR from obtaining taxpayers’ data from the scheduled banks.
FBR member revealed that 1.8 million bank accounts have a deposit of Rs37000 billion.
FBR has only data of 10 lakh bank-registered bank accounts, and the information about big companies is with the Federal Board of Revenue.
