The Public Accounts Committee (PAC) of the National Assembly on Wednesday demanded disclosure of tax returns of all media houses. The PAC meeting was held on Wednesday and was chaired by Nadeem Afzal Chan. Khawaja Asif of the PML-N raised the issue of disclosure of tax returns of parliamentarians in a recently-published book. He accused the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) officials of leaking parliamentarians’ tax return record. He also blamed the FBR for protecting former dictator Pervez Musharraf and demanded the disclosure of his tax returns too. Khawaja Asif and Hamid Yar Hirraj of the PML-Q also demanded publicising tax returns of media houses. Asif also demanded the names of those who had got their loans written off in the past 65 years. The PAC chairman instructed that the tax defaulters be immediately served notices. FBR Chairman Arshad Hakim informed the PAC that they had held a survey in which 2.9 million people were taxable, but only 0.8 million paid tax. He said the Hundi rate was 1.4 percent and the FBR was considering one percent charges on it for bringing it in the tax net. Noor Alam Khan questioned the clearance of NATO containers by Custom officials within 30 minutes without a proper checking. He said parliament passed a resolution that NATO supplies could not carry weapons and the same should be enforced. Chan said the NATO supplies issue was under discussion by the parliamentary committee on National security.
