About 60,000 taxpayers, who were asked to remove discrepancies detected during scrutiny of sales tax returns filed electronically up to May 31 are facing hardships to resolve the issues because the system is still not able to activate revised tab in thousands of cases.
Sources told Business Recorder on Friday that web-portal of the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) is in idle position, creating difficulties for taxpayers to file revised sales tax returns on time. They said that the board has not provided guidelines to the taxpayers to file revised sales tax invoices but has asked to file these within stipulated time allowed under section 7 of the Sales Tax Act, 1990.
According to the provision, "a registered person did not deduct input tax within the relevant period he may claim such tax in the return for any of the six succeeding tax periods". Sources said the taxpayers could earlier revise their returns without any permission of sales tax collectors but after the commencement of FBR web portal, the revision in sales tax returns can only be entertained if the collectors grant permission in this regard.
They said that in this case, FBR has allowed taxpayers to file revised returns without collector''s approval. They said that majority of discrepancies were detected in the commercial importers'' returns because of rule 58 (D), which is not appropriate to deal with closing stock.
According to rule 58 (D), "the closing stocks of imported goods held by commercial importers on June 30, on which 2 percent additional sales tax was paid at import stage, shall be disposed of under the provision of the chapter as enforce before July 1". "The differential amount payable, in case tax charged was higher than paid at import stage, shall be paid on the monthly return as arrears of tax."
In view of the above rule, no sale was reported and the differential amount, if any, was shown as an arrear of tax in the return. However, on the other hand, the registered buyer has reported the same in his purchase summary because the said rule was not applicable to him, they observed.
They said that if the board did not resolve these issues, discrepancies detected in the sales tax returns could not be removed. They said the board should take positive measures in this regard, and urged FBR to extend the deadline of filing revised returns up to June 30 to facilitate taxpayers.
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