KARACHI: Siraj Qasim Teli, the former president of the Karachi Chamber of Commerce and Industry (KCCI), has demanded that the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) makes public the list of 600,000 tax defaulters at the earliest.
Talking to Customs Today, Siraj Qasim, who is also the chairman of the Businessmen Group and director of the Pakistan Beverages Limited, said that the FBR officials had been claiming that they had detected 600,000 tax defaulters and their names were being kept secret.
“The governments, both the former and the present, did not wish to make public the names of tax defaulters. The PPP-led government had time and again assured that the list of tax defaulters would be made public, and we are hearing the same words from the sitting PML-N government,” he added.
“We are taxpayers and we always support democracy. However, the people, especially the business community, get relief during the military rule,” Siraj Qasim said.
It is worth mentioning here that the FBR had detected 600,000 tax evaders who got the national tax number (NTN) for the sale and purchase of motor vehicles and other business purposes, but did not submit their annual tax returns, and said that their income was less than Rs 200,000.