Federal Tax Ombudsman (FTO) seeks report from the Chairman Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) on the issue of taxpayers facing problems to become Active Taxpayer on 'ATL' despite filing their income tax returns manually.
Sources told Business Recorder that office of FTO has written a letter to the Chairman FBR and forward an email of a Lahore based Advocate with the subject 'Severe Violation of Section 114 & 118 of the Income Tax Ordinance, 2001 read with Rule 73 of the Income Tax Rules, 2002 and report has been sought from the FBR.
Sources further told that a Lahore based tax lawyer Waheed Butt has approached the forum of FTO to initiate Own Motion intervention as the taxpayers are facing problems to become Active Taxpayer on Active Taxpayer List 'ATL' issued by FBR despite filing their tax returns manually, as tax department is picking only electronically filed returns for the purposes of ATL on weekly basis. Manually filed income tax returns have not been entered / picked in the data to update the ATL on weekly basis and only electronically filed tax returns have been picked to issue undated/unsigned ATL on ever Sunday.
The ATL has become more important after the amendments made in the Income Tax Ordinance, 2001 through the Finance Act, 2015 under which the gap of withholding tax rates had been widened for income tax return filers and non-filers. Primary condition for becoming a Filer in terms of Income Tax Ordinance 2001 which deals with income tax matters is that the taxpayer's name should appear in the "ATL". Section 2(23A) of the Income Tax Ordinance 2001 deals with this issue which reads as "Filer" means a taxpayer whose name appears in the active taxpayers' list issued by the Board from time to time or is holder of a taxpayer's card. This means that only the taxpayers' whose name appears in ATL would be considered as 'filers' and all other taxpayers shall be treated as Non-Filer.
If someone wants that his name, NTN/CNIC should appear in the ATL, he is obliged to submit his last income tax return. The persons who have not submitted their returns for tax year 2014 have been ousted from the said list. However, in case they file their return their name will appear on the ATL that should be uploaded on the website of the FBR on weekly basis. However, those who file manual returns always find themselves in trouble for unknown reasons. There are many cases where the taxpayers have filed income tax returns for tax year 2014 well within time manually, as they were not legally required and obliged to submit the income tax return online/electronically. However, even then their names are not appearing in the ATL: Sources added.
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