Islamabad: Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) Chairman Shabbar Zaidi has written another letter to the UAE authorities in an effort to devise a mechanism for sharing the details of Pakistani iqama-holders engaged in tax evasion – a news source reported.
In the letter to the UAE Ministry of Finance, Zaidi pointed out that schemes like Residence by Investment (RCI) allow people to circumvent reporting of bank and financial account information under the OECD’s Common Reporting Standard (CRS) framework. He contended that this allowed them to evade taxes.
He added that the issue is of critical importance to Pakistan, since it impedes their ability to access actionable bank account information of tax evaders purportedly hiding behind UAE-Iqama based residential status.
Earlier, Pakistan had requested information on 5000 to 14000 Pakistanis who had invested in UAE properties worth billions of dollars. Some of these details had been shared by the UAE authorities at the time, but the details on their iqama status were not shared.
