The many amnesties of Naya Pakistan “First they steal money then introduce tax amnesty schemes. Such schemes are created to benefit the corrupt. Only corrupt elements become the ultimate beneficiaries. This is to fool the honest people of the country and encourage corrupt elements to plunder and amass wealth, only to whitewash it later on”. Imran Khan
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By Mohito
ll governments in the recent past when facing economic slowdown have introduced amnesty schemes to kickstart the economy. The result has always been the same. The promised fruits failed to materialize. It is ironic that in PTI’s short tenure of three and a half years, Prime Minister Imran Khan
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despite his distaste of amnesty scheme as obvious from the above quote introduced three amnesty schemes through presidential ordinances.
Asset Declaration Scheme 2019
May 14, 2019
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he President of Pakistan promulgated the Asset Declaration Ordinance 2019 on 14th May 2019 offering the people 45 days (till June 30) for declaration and whitening of undisclosed assets, sales, expenditure and Benami assets at nominal tax rates. The scheme was announced two days after the staff-lever agreement with IMF was reached by the government for the $6 Billion
Extended Financing Facility (EFF) to implement “ambitious structural reform agenda” over a period of 9 months. The amnesty scheme was discussed in the staff level negotiations and IMF had grudging given a nod to it according to Teresa Sanchez, IMF’s country representative “...we were not happy about it at the time, we said OK, because we saw it as a targeted attempt to facilitate the implementation of the Benami law”” The scheme allowed whitening of assets within country and abroad (with the exception of real estate) after paying a nominal rate of 4%. The whitened cash assets will have to be kept in Pakistani bank accounts. To continue keeping the cash abroad, a rate of 6% will be applied. In case of real estate, its value will be considered 1.5 times the FBR assigned value (or DC rate in case FBR assigned value isn’t available) before applying the nominal rate of 4% for whitening.
