KARACHI: In a major development towards transparency and to check suspected undocumented money in the banking channels, all commercial banks have agreed to share their client financial transactions details with tax authorities of Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) by the end of January.
The banks would provide details of customers including name, CNIC and address. The banks would further provide details of persons making transactions, which included: cash withdrawal above Rs50,000; deposits above Rs10 million in a month; Rs200,000 transactions through credit or debit cards in a month etc.
The development comes after an agreement signed between the FBR and financial institutions in November last year. Under the agreement, the banks will provide a bulk of information of financial transactions made during the first half of the current fiscal year i.e July-December 2019/2020.
It has been learnt that details of accountholders, who made transactions, including cash withdrawal, deposits and payment through credit, debit cards etc will be provided to the FBR.
The FBR and the Pakistan Bankers Association (PBA) on November 27, 2019 signed an agreement that enabled the tax department to access real-time information of transactions made through the banking channels which would enable FBR to detect a large number of potential taxpayers through examination of data shared by the banks.
The volume of banking transactions increased substantially during past few years while the deposits through the banking system increased to record high of Rs14.63 trillion by the end of December 2019 as compared with Rs13.35 trillion in the same month of the last year, according to data released by the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP).
