Pakistan today said it is in touch with Swiss authorities to recover a whopping USD 200 billion stashed by Pakistanis in the European country's secretive banking system.
Parliamentary Secretary for Finance Rana Muhammad Afzal Khan told the National Assembly that the cabinet has approved a summary to re-negotiate the existing Pakistan-Switzerland Tax Treaty.
The re-negotiation of this treaty will help identify those Pakistanis who have illegally stashed away their money in the Swiss banks.
Former president Asif Ali Zardari throughout his tenure was accused of corruption and stashing money in Swiss banks dating back to the 1990s.
He said the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) is engaged in a campaign to identify those not filing their taxes and notices have been issued to 92,000 potential taxpayers.
In response to the campaign, over 8600 have filed their returns, Khan informed the National Assembly.
The Parliamentary Secretary said the government wants to bring 100,000 potential taxpayers in the tax net during the current financial year and the FBR is making all out efforts to achieve the tax collection target for this year.
He said data of people purchasing real estate property in posh areas and incurring heavy amount on utility bills and school fees is being collected.
Khan said the government aims to bring additional one hundred thousand in the following years, state-run Radio Pakistan reported.
He said the number of persons filing returns will be increased to 1.3 million from the current eight hundred thousand people.
Briefing the House about the government's fiscal reforms, the Parliamentary Secretary said the fiscal deficit has been contained at three per cent during the first seven months of the current financial year as against fiscal deficit of 4.2 per cent in the same period last year.
