In a move that may undermine the drive against tax evasion, amendments in the wealth statement form that the govt. introduced over a year ago has reduced the disclosure requirements for those taxpayers who own offshore assets. The govt. has separated the disclosure requirements for assets held inside and outside Pakistan, making the disclosure rather more discretionary in case of offshore assets. It has allowed the taxpayers to only mention the foreign assets in lump sum, without giving details of nature of the property, asset and their locations and hence the taxpayer would not be required to identify the offshore asset. The FBR had made these changes in the Statement of Assets and Liabilities, in Dec’16 and the new form was used for filing tax returns for TY17.