KARACHI: People earning foreign come of over $10,000 have or having assets worth $100,00 would now be required to file their annual come tax returns, as per new laws.
The recently announced tax amnesty scheme was on Sunday decreed into law via four ordinances by the President on April 8th, reported an English daily.
Revisions to the Section 114 and Section 116 of the Income Tax Ordinance in one of the ordinance makes it compulsory for individuals earning foreign income over $10,000 or having foreign assets worth $100,000 or more to file their income taxes.
Also, these individuals would need to provide details in their wealth statement and returns which would include the mention of total foreign assets and liabilities on final day of tax year.
These people would need to furnish all details of their foreign income and expenditures during the tax year to the authorities.
And as per the ordinance, any individual failing to meet these requirements would get penalized.
The government has set a new requirement to know the source of income and according to experts Section 111 (4) (a) of Income Tax Ordinance 2001 provided complete reprieve to incoming remittances.
Also, the govt made an important amendment in the Protection of Economic Reforms Act, 1992 which shall have effect notwithstanding anything contained in the Foreign Currency Accounts (Protection) Ordinance, 2001.
As per the revision, no cash shall be allowed to be deposited in any foreign currency account unless the account holder is a filer as defined in the Income Tax Ordinance, 2001.
This effectively means that the present system of feeding the foreign currency accounts by cash shall be limited only to person who are filers under the Income Tax Ordinance, 2001.
This provision would be applicable from April 9, 2018.
