Income tax audit: FBR empowered to automatically select cases of late filers

After expiry of deadline for filing of income tax returns/statements on December 15, Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) is legally empowered to automatically select cases of all late filers for income tax audit. Official sources confirmed to Business Recorder that FBR has decided not to grant any more extension in date for filing of income tax returns/statements. No further extension has been granted in filing of returns after expiry of deadline on December 15, 2017.
Sources said that after expiry of last date for filing of returns on December 15, 2017, the cases of late filers would be automatically selected for audit under section 214D of the Income Tax Ordinance 2001. The automatic selection of cases for audit would relate to only direct taxes and there would be no audit for sales tax or federal excise duty (FED).
Under section 214D of Income Tax Ordinance, 2001, the cases would be selected automatically over late e-filing of returns for audit under the aforesaid section. The provision would be applicable for late filers who would file returns from December 16 onwards, they added.
After extending the deadline by four times in the current fiscal year, the FBR has received a total of 1,072,000 income tax returns till December 15, 2017 against 865,000 received in the same period of tax year 2016. This shows a substantial increase in the number of returns received during the same period of previous fiscal year.
Over 1.07 million returns have been filed till December 15. However, the FBR had received over 1.2 million tax returns during last financial year 2016-17 as receiving of returns had continued in months ahead and finally the number of total return filers in accordance with active taxpayers list had crossed 1.2 million mark.
Under a new initiative for expanding tax-base, the FBR has taken first step by establishing special zones with the purpose of broaden the tax base. Three dedicated offices have already been established in three major cities and this setup will be replicated in all Regional Taxpayer Offices (RTOs) across Pakistan in the subsequent months of the current fiscal year.