Karachi: The Overseas Investors Chamber of Commerce and Industry has said in the budget recommendations to the government that NTN should be made mandatory for bank accounts.
The proposal further states that NTN should be made mandatory for buying and selling of vehicles, sale of expensive property, foreign ambassadors and membership of clubs. Similarly, a separate wing of FBR should be set up to work closely with the Financial Monitoring Unit of the State Bank to trace the income and assets of non-filers that do not match their income. 5000 notes should be scrapped to discourage cash transactions.
OICCI, the representative body of foreign investors comprising 200 multinational companies, has asked the government to remove the exemption given to pensioners and tax them as well. Income tax should be levied on all air tickets, especially from non-filers. Similarly, it has been proposed to impose withholding tax on hoteling and travel expenses to discourage cash flow in the economy so as to create a document economy. Initiatives like State Bank direct digital payments should be adopted.
OICCI has suggested that digital invoicing should be made mandatory for all sectors. Platforms like fintech, POS invoices, e-invoices, mobile wallets should be promoted for digitization of payments. This will help the government bring retailers and service providers into the tax net.
The OICC has suggested that the government should make the wholesalers and distributors mandatory to furnish their customer information (name, NTN, address) in their sales tax return and withholding statement in the first phase to increase the tax net. . In case of non-compliance, income tax and input tax should not be allowed.
