The National Assembly’s Standing Committee on Funding on Wednesday adopted a softer version of a bill to ban the purchase of cars, investments in shares and properties in addition to a certain value of unjustified persons, but linked its approval of the National Assembly with the budget.

Under the leadership of PPPP MNA Syed Naveed Qamar, the committee instructed that the amended version of the tax law (amendment) Bill 2024 should be included in the Finance proposal 2025.

Unlike in the past, as the National Assembly Information Committee on Funding was not allowed to discuss the financial proposal, the committee would this time review the new taxation proposals after changes in the rules.

The changed version is very different from the original bill proposed by the Federal Board of Revenue. It exempts a large segment of society from the applicability of the law. The definition of the eligible persons has been expanded and the list of the assets that can be used to justify the purchase has been expanded.

The committee’s decision made a recommendation from a subcommittee in which PTIS Usama Mela and MNA Jawed Hanif played important roles.

The government had introduced the amendment to tax law in the National Assembly to prohibit financial transactions from the unjustified persons – those who do not have sufficiently declared cash equivalent resources to buy a property.

According to the proposed legal amendment, a person cannot buy a property until the assets declared in his last year’s tax return are sufficient for purchase or the person will make a new statement to reveal the source of buying the property. FBR has not yet developed a real -time secure technological solution where the buyer is obliged to submit the declaration.

FBR had proposed section 114C as an additional layer of statement, and FBR still had the legal authority to verify these assets when the buyer first submitted his income and wealth statement each year.

There are two significant changes from the standing committee. According to a change in the proposed section 114c, the new law cannot be implemented without determining the value of the federal government. The “real estate transactions carried out by ordinary citizens and the lower and middle -income class, especially first -time buyers or those who buy their primary residential property are not affected” by the new legislation.

The definition of the eligible persons has also been expanded by including the assets of the immediate family members to justify the purchase.

It is important that the definition of “adequate resources” has also been expanded by adding local and foreign currencies, fair value of gold, net realized value of shares, bonds, receivables or other cash equivalent assets that may prescribe “.

Previously, the government had also imposed withholding taxes to encourage people to become tax files. But people have filed the tax returns just to carry out a real estate transaction, and FBR seemed to be happy with only getting an extra amount instead of going after them so as not to pay their taxes on actual incomes.

It was also decided that even if section 114c was adopted in the budget; It would only take effect before the exception value was notified by the federal government. The committee also changed the clause related to the immediate family members and introduced the definition of dependent children instead of using the expressions son and daughter.

The non-resident Pakistanis and the listed companies will be exempt from submitting the additional information information.

Some members of the committee had previously expressed reservations about relaxing these definitions. The committee’s decision will exclude 95% people from the scope of the new changes, which means that there can never be genuine documentation in Pakistan, “said MNA Jawed Hanif Khan in February this year.

ZTBL turns around

The National Assembly expressed reservations against the government’s decision to sell Zarai Taraqiati Bank Limited despite being turned around and being the only specialized bank serving the underprivileged agricultural society.

The committee decided to raise the issue of the ZTBL privacy in the National Assembly to put pressure on the government to drop the transaction.

ZTBL’s list of the privatization program has stopped the progress of the new information technology programs, and we cannot even hire a person despite pressing needs, informed ZTBL President Tahir Yaqoob Bhatti the standing committee.

Being a three-time former privacy minister I can sense that the bank’s privatization cannot happen in the next two years and there is no need to stop the important work in the bank, Syed Naveed Qamar noted.