FBR data shows nearly 12m tax returns filed only to buy property or a vehicle
Nearly 12 million people on the Federal Board of Revenue's books have filed an income tax return for a single reason: to buy or sell property or a vehicle, according to FBR data reported by Token Times. Only about 7.5 million of the registered filers keep filing year after year, the board's sources said, leaving roughly 4.5 million who appear in the system for one transaction and then go quiet.
The gap matters because the FBR's compliance machinery is built around notices, and those notices go out by email. Non-compliance is often spotted only when a blocked filer opens their IRIS account to file for a new transaction, the sources said, so the board is chasing people who have already left the system rather than catching them as they use it.
FBR officials are now weighing a structural fix: cleaning the system by removing the requirement to file for people with no income to declare. The Finance Act 2025 introduced the concept of restrictions on economic transactions to do exactly that, but the sources said the measure was compromised by political economy constraints. If the change goes through, returns filed by spouses and dependent children purely to enable one-off property or vehicle deals would stop, they said.
For Pakistanis buying or selling a home or a car, the filing requirement is often a box to tick rather than a tax obligation, and the FBR's own numbers suggest the register is padded with such filers. The board has separately moved against late filers, marking thousands of taxpayers inactive after the 31 October deadline, Token Times reported.
