Pakistanis working, buying assets abroad exempted from amnesty scheme

Pakistani nationals working and buying assets abroad in countries such as the UAE, the GCC, the United States and other European countries are exempted from submitting details as per the amnesty scheme.

This is because they earned the money and bought assets abroad, leaving them out of the scope of the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) amnesty scheme. "It is a lucrative scheme with lowest tax rates of just 2 to 5 per cent, depending on the nature of the assets. You will be in the records of the FBR and no one will question you about your assets and income," said Talha Aziz, staff officer to the chairperson of the FBR, quoted Khaleej Times.

“It has two key features. One is that all declaration will be confidential and secondly people will not have to pay any other taxes upon the declaration of these foreign assets," Aziz added.

According to Aziz, Pakistan being a signatory to the OECD's information sharing agreement allows FBR to receive details of assets bought by Pakistanis in foreign countries such as the UAE, Canada and UK from next year.

Earlier, it was reported that The Tax Amnesty Scheme has received 10 times more response as compared to the previous scheme. However, FBR is still updating final figures of its beneficiaries and tax collected under this scheme.