ISLAMABAD: The federal government is expected to promulgate an ordinance to introduce a third tax amnesty scheme for the industrialists. Through the upcoming tax amnesty scheme, the government would offer them to whiten their black money at 5 percent rate by investing in the manufacturing sector.
The amnesty is part of an industrial package that also includes tax benefits for three years on acquisition of sick industrial units. It will also allow overseas Pakistanis to invest in the country’s manufacturing sector and freely take back the profits earned and the capital investment.
The decision to give another tax amnesty scheme may put the just revived $6 billion International Monetary Fund (IMF) programme at stake, as the global lender bars giving any tax amnesty scheme.
Prime Minister Imran Khan shared some key points of this amnesty scheme with business persons and investors in Lahore today.
The finance ministry has circulated a summary amongst the federal cabinet members for the approval of the tax amnesty scheme through the Income Tax Amendment Ordinance 2022. Prime Minister Imran Khan will formally launch his third amnesty scheme in Lahore on Tuesday (today).
The official documents showed that the scheme had been prepared in haste and due to paucity of time, the approval of the Cabinet Committee for Legislative Cases (CCLC) had also not been obtained.
The prime minister dispensed with the condition of submission of a summary to the CCLC and approved the submission of the summary to the Cabinet through circulation, according to the summary.
The government had decided to waive 24% tax rate and another 29% penalties by allowing the people to invest their black money, giving 49% bonanza to the industrialists. An industrialist could avail the tax amnesty scheme by investing Rs50 million.
The arms and ammunition, explosives, sugar, cigarettes, aerated beverages, flour mills, vegetable ghee and cooking oil industries could avail the new tax amnesty scheme. At least three new sections would be inserted in the Income Tax Ordinance of 2001 to allow the people to avail the third tax amnesty scheme.
These were the Sections 59C to carry forward of business losses of sick industrial units, the Section 65H for tax credit for the investment for industrial promotion and the Section 100F for investment in industrial units.
The government has also decided to waive the requirement of only clean and white money investment in order to incentivise the people to invest in new and existing industrial units. The government has waived the applicability of Section 111 of the income tax law to allow investment of dirty money in the industrial sector.
