The Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) has notified through its website that FBR's helpline Numbers 0800-00-227, 111-227-227 and 111-227-228 are temporarily not available due to maintenance. According to the FBR message displayed on its website on Friday, the technical helpline for support on e-Filing, e-Registration and help on FBR's software will be available at number 051-111-772-772.
Tax experts are of the view that maintenance of FBR helpline should have been planned well before the Filing season of Income Tax Returns, they are further concerned about the current timings of the help lines of FBR and PRAL. The PRAL helpline (051-111-772-772) used to be available on 24x7 basis for many years since the year 2007, but this year the helpline is only available on working days (Monday to Friday) for limited time with very few representatives at the helpline due to which either the helpline remains busy or the taxpayers have to wait for quite long before somebody attends the call.
General public is of the view that with the introduction of e-filing of Income Tax returns under the name IRIS, a common citizen can't file his return at IRIS and he has to engage some tax consultant which is source of financial burden as well as stress upon him because of non-friendly and slow system of IRIS. Most of the people get spare time on weekends (ie, Saturdays and Sundays) but they can't use this time for preparation and submission of returns because all help lines of FBR including the technical helpline are not available during those days. Hopefully, FBR will take necessary measures to improve the performance of the IRIS system by making it faster and user friendly, ensuring helpline availability on 24x7 basis, which used to be the case for many years.