83 big firms file income tax returns to LTU

A Total of 83 top corporate entities of Large Taxpayer Unit (LTU), Karachi, had filed their income tax returns so far, depicting encouraging response for the e-filing feature by the large business units of the country.
Sources told Business Recorder on Thursday that total 409 large business taxpayer companies had registered for submitting their returns by e-filing at LTU-Karachi and 83 out of them have filed their income tax returns using this new feature till November 15, 2007.
Sources pointed out that 67 returns had been received at LTU till October 31, 2007, the last date for submission of returns for September entries. However, submission for December bound entries was still in a progress and during the last 15 days, some 16 more companies had filed returns.
The Faisal Bank, Standard Chartered Bank, My Bank, KASB Bank, State Life Insurance Corporation and Unilever Pakistan were amongst those which have submitted their returns by e-filing to LTU Karachi.
The major filing of returns is expected in December 2007, that would be the last month for the submission and the LTU officials are expecting that they would achieve the nearest number of returns.
The LTU Karachi officials said the response by the top companies regarding e-filing of returns was satisfactory and hoped that the next phase of the project, which will be e-payment system is expected to receive the same response by the taxpayers.
The officials said that LTU was paying special attention on the e-filing project keeping the users' satisfaction in view. The rectification in the system has been done with the consultation of Income Tax Bar Association, Chartered Accountants and other stakeholders and the performance of e-filing was satisfactory now, officials claimed.
LTU officials informed Business Recorder that the complaints about connectivity to the e-filing web-portal were also being resolved by increasing the bandwidth. They said that the Federal Board of Revenue had conducted an awareness campaign for the taxpayers to educate them about this modern system prior to its launching. The encouraging response by the clients was the ultimate result of that campaign, officials claimed.
Highly placed sources in FBR apprised that the preparations for the introduction of e-payment system were almost completed by the LTU and the user interface of the system had also been designed. Although, the progress on the system was in pending at the time due to some technical barriers on which the negotiations were under way with other stakeholders, sources added.
Prior to e-filing, the taxpayers used to submit hard copies of returns along with the financial statements. But the introduction of e-filing has made the process easy, accurate and more comprehensive not only for the taxpayers but also for the tax collectors.