Islamabad: The Federation and the provinces have agreed to amend the confidentiality section 216 of the Income Tax Ordinance, which hinders the sharing of tax data.
Earlier, the Federation had refused to share the income tax returns of taxpayers with the provinces due to confidentiality laws.
Sources told The Express Tribune that this month, the National Tax Council meeting chaired by Finance Minister Muhammad Aurangzeb discussed the lack of data sharing between the federal and provincial governments.
On this occasion, the National Tax Council was informed that under Section 216 of the Income Tax Ordinance, tax returns cannot be shared with anyone due to confidentiality, however, the FBR agreed to share specific data that came under the jurisdiction of the provinces, which includes taxes on agricultural income and property income.
Sources said that the Chairman FBR assured that the provinces’ requests for specific tax data will be reviewed and shared with them after considering their relationship with provincial revenue, nature of income and category of taxpayers.
Sources said that often owners of large agricultural land who also do other businesses declare business income as agricultural income to avoid taxes.
To address this issue, the IMF has asked to bring the agricultural income tax rate at par with the federal income tax. Sources said that the maximum rate of agricultural income tax is 15 percent while that of income tax is 50 percent. In the meeting, the FBR also indicated to review the legal obstacles in data sharing.
The federal government also proposed an amendment to Section 216 to give banks and private auditors access to taxpayer data, which is part of the proposed Tax Amendment Bill 2024.
The MoU for which the federation and the provinces signed the necessary amendments regarding tax data sharing in the meeting includes data on vehicles, property, sales tax, stamp duty and agricultural tax, which are also World Bank conditions for loans.
In the meeting, the FBR Chairman said that the lack of consensus on the definition of goods and services is a fundamental problem in data sharing.
Sources said that in the meeting, Punjab did not agree to exclude livestock income from the scope of the new agricultural income tax law. The FBR Chairman clarified that livestock is under the jurisdiction of the federation, and the provinces cannot include it in agricultural income tax.
On this, the Finance Minister requested the Punjab government to remove livestock from its law, however, the Punjab government was of the view that the provincial assembly had already passed a law on this.
The council referred the matter to the executive committee for harmonization between the federal income tax laws and the provincial agricultural laws. The meeting also reviewed the rationalization of the property valuation table to increase tax collection.
