Under an international treaty signed on tax evasion, the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) will be provided with the bank account details of Pakistani’s by authorities in Panama and Switzerland. All member countries of this assigned treaty will be sharing previous and current details of account holders with bank deposits over $1m.
This sharing of information is going to be limited to current details associated with less than $1m value accounts or new accounts opened in the reporting year. According to sources, many Pakistanis have investments and offshore accounts abroad and mainly in Switzerland and Panama. On September 14th of 2016, Pakistan became a signatory to the Multilateral Convention on Mutual Administrative Assistance in Tax Matters. The current number of member countries has increased to 105.
As per rules that have been published by the FBR, it will be obligatory for Pakistani financial institutions to supply data to FBR on a yearly basis by September 30 of next calendar year for further dissemination under automatic exchange arrangement. In the first year, the information will be restricted to six months as Pakistan will apply the treaty from July 01, 2017.
