A large number of taxpayers are facing hardships in filing e-returns, owing to incomplete data available on PRAL. The Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) has introduced new format for filing of returns and has made it mandatory in the budget of 2008-09 to facilitate taxpayers at their doorsteps. The new format requires a registered person to declare his purchases and supplies in a much more elaborate manner as compared to the earlier format.
However, the new format has become more complex, owing to the reportedly faulty FBR web-portal and taxpayers are facing immense difficulties in the filing of sales tax and federal excise returns. Talking to Business Recorder on Monday Abdul Qadir Memon, President, Income Tax Bar Association (ITBA) said that the association has sent a letter to FBR, explained the problems being faced by taxpayers in filing e-returns through the web-portal.
He said that inadequate bandwidth in FBR web-portal and lack of data available on PRAL have led to delay in registering taxpayers for filing e-returns. "The taxpayers engaged in multiple businesses with different sales tax registration numbers STRN are being denied to facilitate in doing businesses except under one category", he said.
"If a manufacturer-cum-importer-cum-exporter chose any single category of business, he would not be allowed to use other means resulting problems for him," he added. Memon said that FBR web-portal has no option to retrieve the lost data and added that the taxpayers have to feed all information again, if any error occurred during the filing of e-returns.
He said that no formal intimation of email is generated by the system to inform taxpayers in case of non-verification of bank challans. However, an old transaction, which is fed with 15 percent sales tax in the system, it would be treated as 'Tax Fraud'. He said that sales tax database is not updated as per the requirements while no appropriate co-ordination available between database and the NTN of taxpayers, causing lot of discrepancies.
He said that 16 percent sales tax is automatically being calculated on the value of supply declared by a registered person even on those goods, which are liable to sales tax at retail source. Memon further said that debit and credit note options are not provided in the web-portal however, single NTN holder could not file multiple returns, owing to non-availability of user ID and absence of password on different STR on single NTN.
He said that GD date is mentioned instead of MR number and MR date however GD number and GD date options are not provided on postal receipt of import through courier services. He added that sales tax arrears option is not provided in the new system. He suggested that the "special help desks" should be set up to solve taxpayer's problems and requested FBR to take positive measures to rectify the errors, which create difficulties for the registered persons in general and members of the Bar in particular.