KARACHI: MCC Appraisement East has detected massive evasion of taxes on import of excipient/chemicals by claiming inadmissible exemption of 8th Schedule of Sales Tax Act, 1990.
An official said that multinational and national pharmaceutical companies are involved in this scam.
Information was passed through Collector Appraisement East Amir Thaim to Additional Collector R&D Imran Sajjad Bukhari that a number of importers of pharmaceutical industry are claiming undue Sales Tax benefit on import of excipients/chemicals. Extra checks were applied. Resultantly, mis-declarations resulting in sales tax evasion to the tune of approximately Rs218 million and income tax evasion of Rs4.5 million is detected.
A team led by then Deputy Collector Shoib Raza formed a tam comprising PA Ashiq Memon, AOs Ghani Soomro, Fahimullah, Mohammad Ali and Shahzad Ahmed was formed to initiate in-depth scrutiny of pharmaceutical consignments, which were claiming their imported chemicals to be excipients for Customs purpose and the excipients as drugs or active pharmaceutical ingredients for the purpose of sales tax.
Accordingly, 152 GDs from July 01 to November 20, 2022 were identified showing anomalous declarations claiming undue benefits of sales tax.
Furthermore, import date from July 01, 2022 onwards is obtained from PRAL, which indicates that 152 consignments have been cleared through MCC Appraisement East without payment of leviable sales of 16% resulting in sales tax evasion of Rs218 million and Rs4.5 million income tax evasion.