ISLAMABAD - The incumbent government would issue the tax directory of all taxpayers including businessmen, service providers, prominent players, artists, and public/private sector employees by the end of next month (March) after unveiling the tax details of parliamentarians last week.
“The Federal Board of Revenue has plan to issue the tax directory of all taxpayers by the end of upcoming month of March”, said Senior Member for Inland Revenue Service, who is also spokesperson of the FBR, Shahid Hussain Asad while talking to The Nation on Tuesday. He further said that tax directory would include tax details of around 0.85 to 0.9 million people, who had filed tax returns in the tax year 2013. Talking about 100 non-tax filer lawmakers, Shahid Hussain Asad said that FBR has given them another opportunity to file income tax returns by the end of current month (February) as done by other parliamentarians of the country. He added that tax directory of all taxpayers would be issued on March 31 2014.
Pakistan would become the fourth country in the world to publish tax particulars of all its registered taxpayers. Sweden, Finland and Norway had issued the tax directory before Pakistan.
It is worth mentioning here that Finance Minister Senator Ishaq Dar had announced to issue a tax directory about the parliamentarians by February 15 and another overall tax directory concerning business community as well as other citizens in March. Therefore, the FBR has issued the tax directory of the lawmakers on February 15 showing 100 elected representatives of the country did not file their income tax returns and 1072 have filed it.
Sources informed that information of the tax directory of all tax directory would include income tax information of all stakeholders including businessmen, media persons, service providers, prominent players, artists, public/private sector employees and all other income tax return filers. Sources added that private and confidential information of taxpayers, who are regular income tax return filers, would be made public by the FBR.
However, the government might not inform about the sources of income of income taxpayers in the tax directory, as it did in the case of lawmakers of the country.