LAHORE: The amnesty scheme for car smugglers and tax evaders has been termed as an anti-industry step and detrimental to the local industry by Pakistan Industrial and Traders Association Front (PIAF).
PIAF Chairman Malik Tahir Javaid urged the chairman Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) to discourage any such decision as the smugglers of vehicles would get encouragement and would continue their criminal activities if a legal cover was given to smuggled vehicles.
Smuggling is eating up much of the revenue therefore stringent measures should be taken against people involved in such ant-social activities.
He said smugglers of vehicles were the main beneficiaries of this proposed amnesty scheme, as luxury cars were being cleared by paying nominal fee under these schemes and damaging the local auto sector, which was providing direct/indirect employment to over 2.5 million persons.
In the past similar tax amnesty schemes have also been abused by tax evaders to launder their untaxed money through state patronage and, under all such amnesty schemes so far, government has failed to collect even a fraction of the black money.
The local auto industry contributes over Rs 80 billion to the government treasury every year therefore foolproof strategy should be adopted to safeguard this one of the largest revenue generation sectors instead of eyeing a very small amount through the amnesty scheme.