KARACHI: Towel Manufacturers Association of Pakistan (TMA) has shown concern over serious issues industrialists are facing, despite a passage of over two months of shifting of monthly sales tax return on the IRIS.

Chairman TMA, Kashif Mehtab Chawla said that the industrialists are still faced with severe issues, even after shifting of monthly sales tax return on the IRIS from December 2021 after passing of two and half months.

This new Portal on IRIS replaced the old system of (PRAL) by the Federal Board of Revenue which was more user-friendly and its users have become well aware of its functions. But we are unable to understand why the FBR has shifted it to a new portal and created problems for its users.

He said that the FBR has claimed that the refund of sales tax through the newly installed system to the exporters swiftly.

However, the exporters are facing lots of problems in filing their monthly sales tax returns to get refunds.

They are unable to submit their sales tax returns timely, he said that the IRIS system is not working properly because ‘annexure H’ in the system has many imperfections.

The FBR has extended the date of monthly sales Tax for the month of January 2022 up to 25-02-2022 but the exporters are still unable to complete their job on time due to problems.

The individual supplier business names are not appearing in both annexures A and C. The users are not getting sum of total amount in last row of annexures.

When users record sales in this portal, suppliers’ names do not appear there.

They are also unable to know the total of annexure H because sum of total is not appearing in annexure H last row.

After the submission of the sales tax return, users cannot see the supplier’s and customer’s names like as annexure A and C of earlier return of PRAL.

The FBR from time to time changed the procedure of sales tax refund, which ultimately creates problems as well as delay in the process of exporters refund amounts.

Exporters’ huge amount is stuck with the FBR, which makes them face financial crunch, leading to a huge impediment to complete orders of the international buyers.

“We, on behalf of the Export oriented industry, strongly demand the continuation simultaneously of the both systems of Sales tax refunds to the exporters,” the TMA Chairman said.

The FBR first of all should take all its stakeholders on board and take their feedback. Then the new IRIS system should be relaunched after a proper testing to make it user friendly.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2022