Registered taxpayers are facing problems in filing their monthly sales tax returns due to non-acceptance of excel-based files by FBR's electronic web portal 'e.fbr.gov.pk' with the objection "Invalid Type Description". Tax experts highlighted the problems in sales tax return form for the month of October 2015 and forwarded the complaints to the Member Information Technology FBR through emails at Member IT memberit@fbr.gov.pk, eSupport esupport@pral.com.pk and stsupport@pral.com.pk.
As per FBR web portal, the IT-Wing has placed the email addresses to resolve the problems faced by the taxpayers but quite surprisingly the highly sophisticated technology adopted by the IT Wing of FBR returns the following amazing results: "Delivery has failed to these recipients or groups"; "the recipient's mailbox is full and can't accept messages now. Please try resending your message later, or contact the recipient directly".
Tax experts are of the view that the concerned wing of FBR is involved in constantly changing the modules of electronic sales tax returns by amending the sales description segment. Sample Ms Excel-based form downloaded from e.fbr.gov.pk is not in line with the sales description inducted by the FBR wing in manually filled data.
According to a tax lawyer, it is practically impossible to feed the data manually where there are sales invoices which runs into several dozen, therefore, sales description issue in the monthly sales tax return form uploaded by FBR on its web portal must be modified immediately and without addressing the problems, taxpayers would not be able to file the return for the period.
FBR should immediately direct the Pakistan Revenue Automation (Pvt) Limited (PRAL) to make changes in the online return form for the convenience of taxpayers and extend the date of filing of the sales tax return for the tax period October 2015, the tax lawyer added.