Glitches mar tax return filing as deadline fast approaching

KARACHI: The online returns filing system of the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) witnessed numerous glitches, computational errors just ahead of the last date, i.e., September 30, 2021.

The Karachi Tax Bar Association (KTBA) in a letter to the FBR chairman sent on Tuesday highlighted various computational errors and glitches on the IRIS portal.

The tax bar appreciated the efforts of the revenue board for launching the return form for the tax year 2021 on July 1, 2021. “However, return filers and tax consultants are not satisfied with the classification of income set in the IRIS (the FBR online portal), and otherwise are experiencing various computational errors, glitches etc,” the tax bar added.

The tax bar also highlighted the problems in the returns filing, which included computation of capital gains tax on disposal of immovable properties; loss on the disposal of securities; incorrect working of tax depreciation; initial allowance on plant and machinery; tax on fee for technical services/royalty of a non-resident person; discrepancies in details available on the FBR online platforms; no draft return form for the SMEs; disclosure of tax collected; wealth statement for non-resident individuals; discrepancies in tax computation of a commercial importer; income attribution with respect to minimum taxation; and computation of foreign income.

The tax bar urged the FBR chairman to fix a meeting with the tax practitioners to resolve the issue at the earliest.

The last date to file income tax returns is September 30, 2021 by salaried persons, business individuals, Association of Persons (AOPs), corporate entities having special accounting year.

The FBR has repeatedly announced that it will not extend the date for filing tax returns for the tax year 2021.

However, Finance Minister Shaukat Tarin recently said that he would discuss the issue of returns filing date, as the FBR system was not working properly for around 10 days due to hacking.