ISLAMABAD: The Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) has proposed that every Banking Company and Electronic Money Institution (EMI) operating in the country be required to electronically upload information for crossmatching of tax and bank information to detect rampant evasion.
Under Section 165AB of the Finance Bill for 2026-27, tabled in the parliament, notwithstanding anything contained in the Banking Companies Ordinance, 1962 (LVII of 1962), the State Bank of Pakistan Act, 1956 (XXXIII of 1956), the Protection of Economic Reforms Act, 1992 (XII of 1992), or any other law for the time being in force, every banking company and Electronic Money Institutions (EMIs) shall electronically upload the information, as mentioned in subsection (2), to the Central Data Hub, for algorithmic cross-matching of tax and bank information.
Information in respect of an account holder having deposits or withdrawals exceeding one hundred million rupees during a reporting period in any or all of the bank accounts maintained by the account holder, specifying particulars of deposits or withdrawals, including opening and closing balances, peak credits and total credits during the reporting period.
This information will be digitally processed and will not be visible to any Income Tax Authority during this cross-matching process.
In case of gross mismatch in the information in respect of an account holder, the digital system of the Board shall feed the information so required into the Compliance Risk Management (CRM) system of the Board, and further proceedings shall be conducted by the National faceless centre as provided in this Ordinance.
The Board shall ensure that such information, shared by the banks, remains strictly confidential and in no case is disclosed or misused in a manner to disregard the confidentiality measures provided in the statutes and rules governing commercial banking, save as provided in this section.
In this section – (a) “reporting period” means, in respect of a Financial Year, a period of six months, starting from: (i) 1st day of July and ending on 31st day of December; and (ii) 1st day of January and ending on 30th day of June,; (b) “specified date” means the– (i) 31st day of January in case of reporting period ending on 31st day of December; and (ii) 31st day of July in case of reporting period ending on 30th day of June; (c) “accounts” means bank accounts maintained by a person including current deposits, call deposits, saving deposits, fix deposits, term deposits, or any other such deposits by whatever name called; (d) “peak credits” means the highest credit balance in all the bank accounts of the account holder on any given date during the reporting period; “Central Data Hub” means a virtual repository of data and information maintained by the Board through PRAL.
The following new clause shall be added, namely: – (c) the State Bank of Pakistan may establish, operate, and maintain a secure centralised virtual repository of banking data, comprising such information, records and financial transactions of persons maintained by scheduled banks based on unique identifiers, as may be prescribed by the Board, and collect and provide data.
