From Abid Usman
LAHORE: A bench of Lahore High Court on Monday issued stay order against the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) notices to JDW Sugar Mills of Jahangir Tareen.
The sugar mills has approached the high court challenging its selection for audit by the Inland Revenue department of the FBR.
Justice Jawad Hassan heard the petition of the sugar mills against the notices of FBR and issued a notice to the taxation authority.
The counsel of the mills said that his client was not a defaulter and regularly paying income tax, but the board has sent it three notices one after another for recovery of the income tax and selected the mills for income tax audit.
The mills’ counsel submitted in a petition that the FBR launched an audit of the five-year old accounts of the company.
He argued that the Inland Revenue department could not hold audit of accounts beyond five years under the law.
The mills had sought the court’s restraining order against the FBR proceedings and declaring the notices dated October 16, 22 and 29 as void.
The high court bench issued restraining order against the notices to served to the sugar mills and issued notice to the FBR.
Earlier Thursday the Lahore High Court (LHC) declared sugar inquires against Jahangir Tareen and the Sharif family null and void.
A high court bench announced the verdict on petitions by Jahangir Tareen and Sharif family challenging the FIA inquiries in light of the sugar commission’s report.
The court ruled that the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) launched inquires on political basis and instead of fulfilling required legal formalities, the investigation agency started harassment.
FIA had also launched probe against sugar mills after Sugar inquiry commission claimed that sugar mills belonging to the families of the country’s top politicians including PML-N’s Shehbaz Sharif, PTI’s Jahangir Tareen and Khusro Bakhtiar, PML-Q’s Moonis Elahi and PPP’s Asif Ali Zardari were among the beneficiaries of the crisis.
In its forensic report – issued on May 21 – the commission had accused the sugar mill owners of earning illegal profits to the tune of billions of rupees through unjustified price hikes, benami transactions, tax evasion, misuse of subsidy and purchasing sugarcane off the books.
