RCIT hopes to collect maximum tax by September 30

With better return filing arrangements, the taxpayers education and issuance of National Tax Number (NTN) certificates to new assessees, the Regional Commissioner of Income Tax (RCIT), southern region, is poised to achieve maximum tax collection for 2003-04 by September 30, the last date for filing the returns.
The ITBA sources said on Tuesday that although the deadline for filing returns on Thursday was zero hours, but the filers managed to enter the banks compound by the midnight would be allowed to file returns.
It suggested that it would be inevitable to give some more time to the taxpayers after September 30, to make up for the gap in return filing due to Shab-e-Braat.
Sources said the tax amount would increase this year due to a good number of new assessees who had obtained the NTN certificates this year.
ITBA President Younus Rizwani Sheikh said that that was the second year of filing returns under the Universal Self-Assessment Scheme (USAS), and both the department and the taxpayers were better organised than the previous years.
That was due to the extensive media campaign launched by the Central Board of Revenue (CBR) as well as a computerised programme to educate the taxpayers on filing returns which helped them a lot in filling extended columns in the new returns with ease and comfort, he added.
The ITBA did not agree with the suggestion that adding more columns in this year return forms is against the universal concept of simplification of document, and said that some check and balances were inevitable after across the board adoption of the USAS.
Due to all those factors, he said, the filing of the tax returns that year started as early as September 15 and rush of filers was witnessed during last three days especially on counters of Zone-D, where every year about 200,000 returns of salaries class were received.
ITBA Secretary Ali Abdul Rahim pointed out that the salary returns were being received without the receiver's signatures, date and official stamps.
The RCIT staff at the counter says that they have no time to affix signature or stamps on the returns. The RCIT, however, has promised to rectify the situation from Tuesday by assigning more staff to the Zone-D counters.