KARACHI: Minister of State and Special Assistant to the Prime Minister on Revenue, Haroon Akhtar, has saidon Friday  that the government will consider to withdraw penalty notices issued against non-filing of monthly withholding statements due to problems on IRIS.

Akhtar, while addressing the participants at the Karachi Tax Bar Association (KTBA)’s Annual Dinner, said he will bring this issue to the Federal Minister for Finance, Mohammad Ishaq Dar’s notice. He was of the view that the taxpayers who  could not file returns due to some genuine problems on IRIS, should be exempted from payment of penalty for late filing of return and default surcharge for late payment of tax.

Akhtar further said that the government would pay back the funds to some 33,000 taxpayers soon as Ishaq Dar has assured him that the FBR  will return Rs 5 million each to 33, 000 taxpayers.

Earlier, Muhammad Zubair, President, KTBA requested the State Minister to resolve the taxpayers’ issues mainly the penalty for late filing of returns highlighting that the taxpayers are receiving notices  for levy of penalty while the IRIS is not working properly since its inception. Zubair said though  the IRIS is a good software but Pakistan Revenue Automation Limited, information technology wing of the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR), has so far not been able to fix the bugs in its system and therefore a large number of taxpayers are unable to electronically file withholding tax statements.

He said some of the field officers started issuing penalty notices for delayed filing despite the fact that that the issues are still there and the monthly statements could not be filed unless the bugs are fixed.

Zubair also requested the  State Minister to revoke the recently taken decision regarding change of communication address with  Regional Tax Offices (RTO) to Tax Facilitation Department at RTO-III Gulistan-e-Johar which  is so far from the main city and the taxpayers have to go there for receiving just one letter.He also drew the attention of the  Special Assistant to the Prime Minister on Revenue towards double taxation on some services on the basis of origin and destination, and sought to get all the provincial sales tax-collecting authorities on the same page.

On the failure of Voluntary Tax Compliance Scheme (VTCS), Zubair said that the government should take all tax bars of the country  on board and should work together to devise the flawless strategy to minimize  trust deficit between the tax authority and general public.

He informed the participants that the FBR has received only 2965 returns till to date under VTCS which is very low while he urged the government to extend the VTCS date further.