KARACHI: Tariq Bajwa, Chairman, Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) has been urged to extend the date up to December 31, 2014 for filing of income tax returns as submitting forms at new system ‘IRIS’ still pose serious problems.
In a letter on Friday sent to the chairman, Karachi Tax Bar Association (KTBA) said that till date no reply of any letter sent to the FBR in respect of the issues raised therein and issues accordingly were still unresolved.
New forms (manual with formula) and IRIS were introduced by the Board on September 16, 2014, which is still being updated from time to time. Lastly as observed by KTBA Members on November 12, 2014, the system was shut down for updating for several hours and the same position was day before yesterday.
In addition to above, as pointed out earlier, the gathering of data in respect of income from salary, KTBA Members are facing lot of difficulties in gathering information about the breakdown of the gross salary as per certificate issued by the employer viz a viz the requirements of the form of return.
Syed Wasim Hashmi, in the letter said that the members have indicated in number of cases, such breakdown is still awaited as the employees are facing difficulties to obtain such breakdown from their employers; as such, till the said information is not available, the members are unable to fill the form of return according to its requirement. “Hence, the e-filing of Returns on IRIS platform continues to pose serious problems,” Hashmi said.
Needless to state that frequent electricity failures have also added burden of work. Various Members of the bar have in fact communicated their sentiments that due to various reasons, the professional work of filing the returns have become torturous due to the fact of volume of work in hand despite the fact that our Members are continuously working for more than 18 hours in a day.
Keeping in view the above facts, desirability of extending the date of filing of return to further appropriate period is very necessary.
In addition the bar also pointed out that the FBR is advertising the last date of filing of returns in the newspapers wherein several classes of persons have been listed. Amongst such class, non-profit organizations have also been added.
It is stated that most of such entities fall under the definition of Company within the meaning of Section 80(2)(b) as amended through Finance Act, 2013. The members pointed out that most of such class of persons income year ends on June 30 and by virtue of treated to be company, last date of filing of return is December 31.
The KTBA requested the FBR that last date of filing of return may be further extended at least for a month enabling our Members to fulfill their professional duties strictly in accordance with law.
Karachi Tax Bar seeks one month extension for filing income tax return
