The Lahore Chamber of Commerce and Industry (LCCI) Monday hailed Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) for accepting its longstanding demand and issued notification for payment of refunds up to Rs 50,000 per year. LCCI President Almas Hyder said that stuck-up sales tax and income tax refunds were one of the most serious issues being faced by the trade and industry as they were running short of capital because of which businesses were squeezing. The Lahore Chamber that was raising this issue continuously is happy over the FBR positive response which issued notification to release refunds up to Rs 50,000/= per year for the Tax Years 2014 to 2018, he said.
The notification, issued by the FBR, says: "To facilitate the taxpayers, especially having smaller amounts of refunds outstanding towards FBR, it has been decided that all taxpayers having Income Tax refunds up to Rs 50,000 per year for the Tax Years 2014 to 2018, may be issued with cheques of their refunds.
Automatic Refund Issuance Cell (ARIC) needs to be established at each RTO to ensure that all refund cheques are sent to the taxpayers on their given address without any human interaction from the field officers. The SOPs of ARIC are being sent separately for compliance, where after the process will be given a go ahead signal."
The LCCI President said that FBR has not only given a big relief to the trade and industry by releasing their stuck-up refunds but has also devised an automatic mechanism for payment without any human interaction which always leads problems. "Next target should be the payment of all income tax and sales tax refunds within Rs1 million to ensure much-needed growth of the most productive sectors", he added.
LCCI Senior Vice President Khawaja Shahzad Nasir and Vice President Faheem-ur-Rehman Saigal said that the delay in release of huge funds that runs into billions were triggering serious liquidity crunch for the trade, exporters and manufacturers. They said that the businessmen were bearing huge financial cost on their own hard earned stuck-up money but now situation would take a good turnaround.
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