The Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) has received approximately 1.301 million income tax returns and statements during Tax Year 2009 against 0.833 million in the same period last fiscal year, reflecting record increase due to voluntary compliance.
Israr Raouf, Member (Direct Taxes Policy) and official spokesman of the FBR told Business Recorder here on Wednesday that the FBR has received Rs 3.9 billion record tax along with the returns and statements during Tax Year 2009 against Rs 732 million last year, showing extraordinary increase in tax payments.
He said that the FBR has received around 0.542 million income tax returns and nearly 0.758 million statements filed by importers, exporters, retailers, contractors, suppliers and salary employers etc. In this way, the total returns and statements come to around 1.301 million. During last fiscal, the board had received around 0.250 million returns and 0.583 million statements. These are provisional figures, which would be increased following compilation of final figures.
He said FBR Chairman Sohail Ahmed has personally visited all major cities and actively interacted with the trade bodies and associations to encourage voluntary compliance. Tax authorities persistently monitored and supervised the whole exercise to ensure maximum filing of returns by all categories of taxpayers. This is for the first time that the FBR has broken all previous records of tax collected with returns, as provisional collection stood at Rs 3.9 billion during the period under review.
The FBR had set up kiosks and work stations at offices of Large Taxpayers Units (LTUs), Regional Tax Offices (RTOs) Tax Facilitation Centres (TFCs) to streamline filing of income tax returns and withholding tax statements by the taxpayers. These kiosks and TFCs played a key role in improving voluntary compliance across the country. Similarly, mobile tax vans have also facilitated the taxpayers in accurate filing of returns.
Israr Raouf said that the FBR awareness campaign in the print and electronic media also encouraged the taxpayers to voluntarily come for filing of returns. The record number of returns along with tax payments reflects the taxpayers' confidence and trust in the policies of the government particularly rapid improvements and reforms of the Pakistan Tax Administration. The establishment of the FBR national databank on sources of information also worked as a deterrent and improved compliance at the level of field formations.
The setting up of work stations comes as part of a broad range of measures being taken on the instruction of FBR Chairman to promote voluntary compliance as well as to facilitate associations of persons (AOPs) seeking to file their tax returns.
Under the programme, workstations (kiosks) were established at each LTU/RTO along with provision computers with Internet connectivity. The stations were manned by professional and technical staff to extend help to AOPs in e-filing. The computers were also be available for self service for the AOPs.
Similar work stations were set up at all FBR TFCs to serve the AOPs seeking to e-file returns at remote and smaller towns. Besides, FBR has also organised workshops at all LTUs/RTOs to explain e-filing procedures to the AOPs. Workshops for explaining procedures involving e-filing of withholding tax statements and procedures for e-filing of income tax returns for the tax year 2009 were also held across the country. As another facilitation measure, the timings of FBR helpline dealing with tax-related queries were also been extended from the existing 9am-4pm to 9am-9pm, Member Direct Taxes Policy added.