The business community of South Punjab has urged the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) to issue income tax return forms in the national language to broaden the tax base because literacy rate in remote areas like South Punjab is not as good as it should be.
President of Multan Chamber of Commerce and Industry (MCCI) MIan Iqbal Hassan has stressed the need for simplifying the existing tax laws and publishing the tax forms in Urdu language to facilitate the taxpayers in filing their returns. He said that language difficulties were discouraging people in becoming registered persons. He said this is in connection with suggestions invited by the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) from stakeholders on new income tax return forms for different categories by July 17. Mian Iqbal Hassan said that Pakistan had a narrow tax base despite having population of around 200 million.
The major reason of this was complicated and ambiguous tax laws and unfamiliar language declaration forms, he added. He said that according to the FBR claims the number of registered persons is only 3.6 million whereas most of them are those who obtained NTN for their personal needs, majority of those NTN holders was not filing tax returns. He said that from the Tax Year 2015 the government has allowed individuals to use Computerised National Identity Card (CNIC) as NTN in filing their income tax return. "The step is likely to boost the filing of income tax returns but if they provided income tax return form in Urdu language, the number will be much higher than expected," he added. He also stressed the need for making income tax return form simpler and easier with less requirements of records.
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