Sheikh Shakeel Ahmed Dhingra, Acting President of Federation of Pakistan Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FPCCI), referring to a news about enforcing the condition of furnishing CNIC number or NTN of unregistered buyers by the registered persons in their sales tax return as envisaged in the SRO 191(1)/2012 w.e.f. March 1, 2012, has urged Chairman FBR to issue a clarification in this regard and the deadline of filing of return be extended from April 15 to 22, 2012.
He recalled that the enforcement of the said SRO is against the decision taken in the Business Persons Council (BPC ) meeting, held under the chairmanship of Dr Abdul Hafeez Shaikh, Federal Finance Minister on April 05, 2012 at Islamabad wherein the FBR Chairman was also present, to suspend the enforcement of SRO 191(1)/2012 till an alternate new business friendly proposal to replace it is formulated by the BPC Committee constituted for this purpose.
Moreover, he added that it was also decided in the BPC meeting that a committee comprising FPCCI and Chambers' representatives would devise some alternate mechanism for the documentation of economy, as well. Thereafter, the FPCCI Acting Chief informed that Syed Mumtaz Haider Rizvi, Chairman FBR in a meeting with the high powered delegations of FPCCI and KCCI held on April 9, 2012 at Karachi had also assued them to maintain the status quo as far as implementation of the provision of SRO 191(1)/2012 are concerned in order to implement the decision taken in the BPC meeting till its replacement by an alternate SRO. He therefore, urged the FBR to clarify the issue and remove the uncertainty and confusion prevailing amongst the trade and industry at the earliest as the deadline for filing of sales tax return for the month of March is April 15, 2012.-PR