KARACHI: The business community continues to have trouble filing their tax returns, despite the Federal Board of Revenue’s (FBR) advice to use the IRIS portal for filing returns and confirming tax deductions.
Iftikhar Ahmed Shaikh, president of the Karachi Chamber of Commerce and Industry (KCCI), reported that a number of businesses had come to the chamber with complaints regarding the FBR’s inoperable tax return filing page.
The online system of the FBR has its limits. Because of this, the tax filing process is still difficult for the average person.
The head of KCCI encouraged the FBR to extend the deadline for filing returns by one month in light of the system’s issues.
According to him, traders have also sent screenshots pertaining to FBR’s server outage and IRIS portal issues.
President of the Federation of Pakistan Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FPCCI), Atif Ikram Sheikh, also drew attention to the technological issues and hold-ups in income tax return filing, and asked for a one-month extension as a special circumstance to allow the system to handle the massive volume and flux.
According to Mr. Atif, in order to streamline the process, the FPCCI has been pleading with the FBR to simplify the income tax return forms in particular and the tax system as a whole. Helping as many citizens as possible with their tax filing is in the best interests of the country. He went on to say that Pakistan’s economy will be more attractive to foreign lenders and financial institutions for outside funding the more inclusive, formal, and well-documented it is.
According to him, FBR must move quickly toward digitalization for a number of reasons, including minimizing the need for human intervention, saving return filers’ time and money, decreasing documentation errors, increasing systemic and procedural efficiency, and lowering complaints, anomalies, and inconsistencies.
Rule 34A(2)(e), (3), and (4), which stipulates that the draft electronic and manual return forms must be produced and made available by January 1, 2024, were major deadlines that the FBR and Pakistan Revenue Automation Ltd failed to meet, according to the head of the FPCCI. On June 21, though, the same were released.
