ISLAMABAD: The Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) is all set to launch a single sales tax portal this month to facilitate taxpayers and ensure ease of doing business through automation, digitalisation, and minimisation of human interaction with the taxpayers.

This landmark initiative has been made possible after thorough discussions with the provincial revenue authorities of Punjab, Sindh, Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, Balochistan, and Azad Jammu and Kashmir.

This facility will enable the taxpayers file single monthly sales tax returns instead of multiple returns (six in the past) on different portals; thereby, significantly reducing the time and cost of compliance, and; thus, achieving maximum efficiency.

The system would be intelligent enough to sift and collect revenue from a single taxpayer and distribute the same among multiple revenue agencies.

This unique project would also help resolve the long outstanding issues of the input tax adjustment among the relevant stakeholders. With the proposed launch of the single sales tax portal later this month, the existing cumbersome and tedious processes would be replaced with an efficient and automated system of tax adjustments, with minimum human involvement.

The portal would also be beneficial for the tax collectors in having a 360 degrees view of taxpayers’ business activities across the country to maximise the revenue potential and tax compliance.

By all standards, this is a giant leap forward in the taxpayers’ facilitation and, at the same time, a significant step in harmonisation of taxes between the federal and provincial governments.

Prime Minister Imran Khan is likely to launch this mega national initiative later this month.