The Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) has introduced new features to the e-filing of income tax returns, commonly known as IRIS. The new features include an entry relating to the increase or decrease in assets of tax filers. Sources said the Board has addressed the most controversial problem on the part of taxpayers with reference to online filing of returns. This problem relates to issues pertaining to password, which majority of the taxpayers forget every year. Some 80 percent of the queries from taxpayers belong to this problem, they added.
The sources said three categories have been incorporated to the IRIS to address the issues of password. They said the taxpayers would be given a code in order to get register with a new password in case they forget or their lawyer does not share it with them. Now the taxpayer can handle the problem himself and there is no need to go to his lawyer or the tax office for resetting of the password. An upgraded IRIS has also introduced a method of uniform calculation for the taxpayers.
It may be noted that every person crossing the minimum tax limit or carrying NTN certificate would have to file a return. A taxpayer is bound to give details of his vehicles. Similarly, every salaried person is bound to file returns. Similarly, an option of pin has been introduced to avoid wrong submission of returns. This trend was also very common in the past, they said.
Third page of the IRIS provides facility for filing of wealth statement, which is very user-friendly with facility to add new fields to make additional entries. The cost of movable or immovable properties can be filed in the shape of cost on this page.
On the reconciliation page, the system tallies data automatically against the entries made in previous year. The system also included the facility of breaking the data, highlighting of unrecognised amounts and verification tab has been added to make sure that the data submitted is as per the satisfaction of taxpayer. The system also provides facility of printing and attaching of documents.
A presentation made by Zain, an IT expert of FBR, was made at the FBR. He also received queries from the participants on IRIS. The last date of filing returns is 30th September and the facility of downloading return forms is available since 19th of August. So far, 1000 returns have been received by the department against only six during the last year for the same period. The upgraded IRIS system has minimised the number of complaints and no complaint has been received till date as all the machines are in working condition. There are 57 virtual machines and not a single link is down so far. There are 1.4 million taxpayers in the country.