KARACHI: The Income Tax Ordinance 2001 has been amended to enable the State Bank of Pakistan to establish, operate, and maintain a secure, centralised virtual repository of banking data, comprising information, records, and financial transactions of persons maintained by scheduled banks.

According to the amendment, ‘‘a new section 165AB has been inserted, whereby notwithstanding the banking confidentiality laws, every banking company and electronic money institution (EMI) shall electronically upload to the central data hub the prescribed information in respect of account holders having deposits or withdrawals exceeding Rs100 million during a reporting period, for algorithmic cross-matching of tax and bank information”.

Rs100m transactions to face scrutiny

“The information to be digitally processed is not to be visible to any income tax authority during the cross-matching, and only in the case of a gross mismatch is to be fed into the Board’s Compliance Risk Management (CRM) system for further proceedings by the National Faceless Centre,” said the amendment.

The amendment defined the terms reporting period, specified date, accounts, peak credits, central data hub, and compliance risk management and provided confidentiality safeguards, it added.

Published in Dawn, September 10th, 2026