The Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) has introduced a new provision in the Expeditious Refund System (ERS) for automatic clearance of sales tax refund under no objection to avoid blockage of claims under the electronic system. In this regard, the FBR has amended the Sales Tax Rules 2006 through an SRO.82(I)/2011 here on Thursday.
According to the notification, the refund claims shall be processed by Risk Management System (RMS) of FBR IT system within two working days of electronic submission of refund claim in the ''RCPS format''. The system will automatically clear the amount under no objection. The electronic advice will be issued to the Centralised Sales Tax Refund Office (CSTRO) and the registered person about the refund amount cleared by the RMS for payment.
The objections detected by the system will be communicated to the refund claimant and the concerned RTO/LTU for -information. The refund claimant will have upto eight weeks, from the date of aforesaid communication by the system, to get these objections cleared. The system validation checks will be re-run on all claims on every Tuesday of the week and any portion will be cleared on which the objections have been removed (''mainly due to receipt of updated information).
Each claim will be re-processed seven times after its first process. After every run (1 initial and 7 re-runs) the claimant will be emailed regarding the objections and remaining deferred amount on the claim after each run, RMS will generate the refund payment order (RPO) of the cleared amount. After being so processed if any amount still remains uncleared, the same shall then be processed under the other rules of this Chapter. The post refund audit of refund claims processed through the RMS will be the responsibility of the Audit Divisions of respective RTO/LTU, the notification added.