KARACHI: The Karachi Tax Bar Association (KTBA) has urged the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) to extend the deadline for filing of companies’ tax returns and statement of final taxation tax year 2018 by a month till January 31, 2018.
In a letter to Chairman FBR Jahanzaib Khan, KTBA President Khalid Mahmood said the last date of filing of Tax Returns by companies (Normal Tax Year) is falling due on December 31, 2018 and requested to extend the due date for filing the same.
The last date for filing the individuals, association of persons and companies (Special Tax Year) tax returns was December 17, 2018, which means that it only provided 14 days for factually working on Corporate Tax Returns due by December 31, 2018.
It may be recalled that extension in those tax returns was provided due to multiple reasons ranging from introduction of new IRIS-ADX filing software to first ever law for disclosure of foreign assets and income in the wake of Foreign Amnesty 2018.
Federal government presented its Supplementary Budget on September 18, 2018, which carries provisions of Section 214E that provides option to the taxpayers for closure of their tax audit with the deadline falling due on the same date of December 31, 2018.
“It need to be recognized that meeting the same deadline for two separate but challenging and equally important exercises gives rise to unimaginable work load for the taxpayers and our Bar members being their tax consultants. It is, therefore, very acutely necessary that the due date for filing the Companies Tax Return is also extended reasonably,” KTBA said.
It would not be out of place to highlight here that besides the above factors, the Return Forms for companies were not finalized until November 09, 2018. This is against the norms under the provisions of the law as the SRO 1357 of 2018 was issued belatedly.
KTBA urged FBR to consider the matter for extension of time as it would be unfair with genuine and bonafide taxpayers to compel them to accomplish something which is not reasonable.
“This position becomes more troublesome due to the recent change by insertion of the new section 182A under the Income Tax Law, which provides for fatal punishment of late filing whereby the late filer is expelled out of the Active Taxpayers List (ATL) and will remain as non-filer for the whole of the next year till March 2020.