Pkrevenue.com

Author: Mrs. Anjum Shahnawaz

  • EOBI pension increased by 30 percent from January 01

    EOBI pension increased by 30 percent from January 01

    ISLAMABAD: The government has decided to increase pension amount by 30 percent from January 01, 2019, special assistant to prime minister said on Thursday.

    “New year is heralding big news for the pensioners of Employees’ Old-Age Benefits Institution (EOBI) as the government has decided to raise their annuity by 30 per cent from January 1,2020,” Special Assistant to the Prime Minister on Overseas Pakistanis and Human Resource Development Sayed Zulfikar Abbas Bukhari said while addressing Ciniplex and Commercial Complex’ inaguration ceremony on Thursday.

    He said that after increase in the EOBI pensioners would receive Rs 8,500 per month from January, 1 next year.

    He said the ministry would move the summary regarding the increase at the next meeting of federal cabinet for a final approval.

    The SAPM said the PTI government, in its efforts to give more relief to the pensioners, had twice increased their annuity in just one and half year’s tenure.

    He said the government had already enhanced the minimum pension of the EOBI’s insured person from Rs 5,250 to Rs 6,500 during 2018.

    The EOBI pension has been enhanced by 62 per cent since the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf government came into power.

    “We are intending to raise this amount up to Rs 15,000 by the end of our tenure (2023),” Zulfikar Bukhari said.

  • Irrecoverable loans to be allowed tax concession

    Irrecoverable loans to be allowed tax concession

    KARACHI: Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) shall allow reduction in tax liability against bed debts where loans are irrecoverable, officials said.

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  • SBP relaxes condition on advance payment against imports

    SBP relaxes condition on advance payment against imports

    KARACHI: State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) on Thursday amended instructions regarding advance payment against imports in order to facilitate manufacturers.

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  • FBR deploys IR officers at 20 sugar mills for monitoring of production, supplies

    FBR deploys IR officers at 20 sugar mills for monitoring of production, supplies

    ISLAMABAD: Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) has deployed officers of Inland Revenue at 20 sugar mills to monitor production and supply for checking tax evasion.

    The IR officers have been deployed at the premises of sugar mills under Section 40B of Sales Tax Act, 1990 for the monitoring of stock, production and supply.

    Sources told PkRevenue.com that Large Taxpayers Unit (LTU) Karachi had requested the FBR to allow monitoring of sugar mills as huge tax evasion was detected in the past.

    Recently, the FBR conducted analysis of sugar production of the last year which revealed huge tax evasion by sugar mills.

    The outcome of analysis showed that FBR and the Cane Commissioner of three provinces had a difference of 641,000 metric tons which showed that the sugar mills were under reporting their stock in order to evade tax payments.

    It is also identified that the local supplies during the tax period of July 2019 fell by 255 percent due to enhancement in tax rate from eight percent in June 2019 to 17 percent in July 2019.

    The analysis further revealed that the stock holding last year ending June 2018 was 3,147,000 metric tons where as closing stock of the year ending on June 2019 was only 2,230,778 metric tons, which showed 29 percent decline.

    It is also pointed out that sugar manufacturers had declared high quantity of supplies during June 2019 to evade sales tax as the tax rate was to increase in July 2019.

    The FBR analysis revealed that the sugarcane was the biggest raw material of sugar industry.

    The undocumented/under-documented nature of this agriculture sector poses a great challenge to accurately gauge the quantity of sugarcane produced and supplied to a particular mill.

    Considering the above facts the FBR allowed deployment of IR officers at the sugar mills.

    It is worth mentioning that the FBR Chairman through an official memorandum barred the tax offices for invoking Section 40B of the Sales Tax Act, 1990 without prior permission of the board or Member IR Operations.

    Following is the list of sugar mills where IR officers have been deployed:

    01. M/s. Darya Khan Sugar Mills Limited.

    02. M/s. Popular Sugar Mills Limited.

    03. M/s. Deharki Sugar Mill Limited.

    04. M/s. Adam Sugar Mill Limited.

    05. M/s. Baba Farid Sugar Mill Limited.

    06. M/s. Digri Sugar Mill Limited.

    07. M/s. Mirpurkhas Sugar Mill Limited.

    08. M/s. Faran Sugar Mills Limited.

    09. M/s. Mehran Sugar Mills Limited.

    10. M/s. Dewan Sugar Mills Limited.

    11. M/s. Al-Abbas Sugar Mills Limited.

    12. M/s. Ansari Sugar Mills Limited.

    13. M/s. Bawany Sugar Mills Limited.

    14. M/s. Larr Sugar Mills Limited.

    15. M/s. New Dadu Sugar Mills Limited.

    16. M/s. Rani Sugar Mills (Pvt) Limited

    17. M/s. Al-Noor Sugar Mills Limited

    18. M/s. Tando Allahyar Sugar Mills Limited

    19. M/s. Habib Sugar Mills Limited

    20. M/s. Sindabadgar Sugar Mills Limited

  • Pakistan, China agree to expedite customs clearance through green corridor

    Pakistan, China agree to expedite customs clearance through green corridor

    ISLAMABAD: Pakistan and Chinese customs authorities have agreed to expedite clearance of agriculture products under proposed green corridor at Sost-Khunjarab Border.

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  • Tax exemption available on ‘profit on debt’ if security issued outside Pakistan

    Tax exemption available on ‘profit on debt’ if security issued outside Pakistan

    KARACHI: Tax exemption is available to profit on debt where security issued outside Pakistan for raising loan.

    Officials in Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) on Wednesday said that tax exemption is available on profit on debt in certain conditions.

    According to Income Tax Ordinance, 2001, any profit received by a non-resident person on a security issued by a resident person shall be exempt from tax under this Ordinance where—

    (a) the persons are not associates;

    (b) the security was widely issued by the resident person outside Pakistan for the purposes of raising a loan outside Pakistan for use in a business carried on by the person in Pakistan;

    (c) the profit was paid outside Pakistan; and

    (d) the security is approved by the FBR for the purposes of this section.

    The income tax exemption is also available to any scholarship granted to a person to meet the cost of the person’s education shall be exempt from tax under this Ordinance, other than where the scholarship is paid directly or indirectly by an associate.

    Any income received by a spouse as support payment under an agreement to live apart] shall be exempt from tax under the Ordinance.

    The officials said income tax exemption is also available to the income derived by the federal government, provincial government, and local government.

    The income of the Federal Government shall be exempt from tax under the Ordinance.

    The income of a Provincial Government or a Local Government in Pakistan shall be exempt from tax under this Ordinance, other than income chargeable under the head “Income from Business” derived by a Provincial Government or Local Government from a business carried on outside its jurisdictional area.

    Any payment received by the Federal Government, a Provincial Government or a Local Government shall not be liable to any collection or deduction of advance tax.

    Exemption under this section shall not be available in the case of corporation, company, a regulatory authority, a development authority, other body or institution established by or under a Federal law or a Provincial law or an existing law or a corporation, company, a regulatory authority, a development authority or other body or institution set up, owned and controlled, either directly or indirectly, by the Federal Government or a Provincial Government, regardless of the ultimate destination of such income as laid down in Article 165A of the Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan:

    Provided that the income from sale of spectrum licenses and renewal thereof by Pakistan Telecommunication Authority on behalf of the Federal Government after the first day of March 2014 shall be treated as income of the Federal Government and not of the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority.

  • Intelligence discovery of around Rs1bn evasion raises question on customs collectorates performance

    Intelligence discovery of around Rs1bn evasion raises question on customs collectorates performance

    KARACHI: Performance of customs officials in clearance of imported has become questionable following back to back detection of around Rs1 billion by intelligence wing.

    Directorate of Intelligence and Investigation (I&I) Customs pointed out tax avoidance of an amount of Rs221 million by Oil and Gas Development Company Limited (OGDCL) and recovered the same.

    In another case the intelligence directorate detected tax evasion of around Rs755 million by three importers of steel products.

    The sources said that the huge discovery of tax evasion and avoidance raised questions about the performance of customs officials posted at Customs collectorates in Karachi.

    The officials of customs intelligence have jurisdiction over those goods which were cleared by customs collectorates. The sources said that huge discovery of evasion and avoidance showed inefficiency of the customs staff posted at collectorates or something else.

    The sources said that in both the cases the intelligence was ascertaining the role of customs officials in evasion and avoidance.

    They said that in the case of OGDCL, the company wrongly claimed the exemption. However, the company paid the amount as pointed out by the intelligence directorate.

    However, in other case customs intelligence and investigation lodged around 26 FIRs two days ago against three importers for misusing SRO 655(I)/2006 dated June 26, 2006 for clearance of steel products.

    The said consignments were cleared by three model collectorates in Karachi where only one percent customs duty was paid instead actual payment of 20 percent duty.

    The sources said that the three importers jointly evaded around Rs755 million. They, however, said that the evasion was detected post clearance by the collectorates.

    The sources in customs intelligence and investigation said that they had jurisdiction over cases where consignments were allowed clearance after proper scrutiny of prevailing laws and applicable customs valuations.

    The sources further said that besides lodging FIRs against importers, the authorities had launched probe into the cases that why the consignments were not examined properly by the customs collectorates.

    As per the concessions the importers cum-manufactures had been allowed imports at reduced rate of duty for in-house value addition but in the instant cases the importers had sold the goods in the open market in the raw form.

    As per the FIRs the importers misdeclared the quality of steel products at the customs clearance stage.

  • Stock market declines by 133 points on selling pressure

    Stock market declines by 133 points on selling pressure

    KARACHI: The stock market ended down by 133 points on Wednesday owing to selling pressure witnessed during the day.

    The benchmark KSE-100 of Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX) closed at 40,531 points as against 40,664 points showing a decline of 133 points.

    Analysts at Arif Habib Limited said that the market replicated yesterday’s performance, the index traded range bound from +247 points to -214 points during the session and closed the session at low ebb.

    At the start of session, index opened on a positive note with +77 points and 3.74 million shares traded on opening. Volumes improved over the day and cross 300 million mark again.

    Selling pressure was evident almost across the board, but mostly observed in Oil & Gas chain and Banks. Cement sector led the volumes with 44.6 million shares followed by Vanaspati (44.5 million) and Banks (31.8 million).

    Among scrips, UNITY topped with 44.5 million shares, followed by POWER (16.3 million) and PAEL (15.6 million).

    Sectors contributing to the performance include Banks (-50 points), Power (-44 points), Cement (-28 points), Inv Banks (-23 points), Autos (-20 points), Chemical (+14 points), and Textile (+11 points).

    Volumes increased from 254.7 million shares to 305.1 million shares (+20 percent DoD). Average traded value also increased by 18 percent to reach US$ 70.0 million as against US$ 59.5 million.

    Stocks that contributed significantly to the volumes include UNITY, POWER, PAEL, BOP and KEL, which formed 34 percent of total volumes.

    Stocks that contributed positively include MARI (+37 points), FFC (+14 points), COLG (+13 points), SYS (+9 points) and SHFA (+7 points). Stocks that contributed negatively include PPL (-32 points), HUBC (-28 points), DAWH (-18 points), MCB (-18 points), and LUCK (-13 points).

  • Rupee ends unchanged in range bound trading

    Rupee ends unchanged in range bound trading

    The Pakistani rupee remained stable against the US dollar on Wednesday, as the interbank foreign exchange market witnessed range-bound trading with limited volatility, according to currency dealers.

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  • Customs intelligence recovers Rs221.7 million from OGDCL for claiming wrong exemption

    Customs intelligence recovers Rs221.7 million from OGDCL for claiming wrong exemption

    KARACHI: Directorate of Customs Intelligence and Investigation, Karachi has recovered Rs221.7 million from Oil and Gas Development Company Limited (OGDCL) against avoiding payment of duty and taxes on import of seamless pipes.

    Officials at the directorate on Wednesday said that the oil and development company imported seamless pipes from China and got cleared through MCC Appraisement East, Karachi while availing exemption under SRO 678(I)/2004.

    “The GD was assessed and cleared by the collectorate under claimed exemption on customs duty at five percent and additional customs duty at four percent total amounting to Rs71.77 million against total assessed value of Rs797.53 million,” according to an official note sent to Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) Headquarters.

    It said that the scrutiny of GD revealed that the exemption was wrongly claimed as it was not admissible on the goods being locally manufactured.

    While realizing the factual position the representatives of OGDCL submitted pay orders amounting Rs221.71 million, which was drawn on National Bank of Pakistan (NBP).

    The payment of differential amount proved that the OGDCL had wrongly claimed exemption under the SRO 678(I)/2004 which resulted into loss of government revenue. The paid amount included Rs39.87 million as customs duty, Rs154.56 million as sales tax and Rs27.27 million as additional sales tax.

    The pay orders submitted by the company were sent to the clearance collectorate for deposit in the government treasury after assessment of the GD so that consignment may be de-blocked.

    The directorate said that the amount was deposited in the government treasury. However, role of customs officers/officials is being ascertained in the matter.

    Director I&I Irfan Javed praised the extraordinary efforts of Adnan Rafiq, Deputy Director, in detection of the evasion.