ISLAMABAD: Despite a lot of hue and cry over the ‘inbuilt technical flaws’ in the e-filing System under Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS) of the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR), the Finance Ministry firmly declares that it has not received any complaint against the system from stakeholders.
“No shortcomings have yet been pointed out in the system from the stakeholders, so there was no need to improve the system on the basis of taxpayers’ lack of understanding of the system, law and rules” a source told at Finance Ministry.
All known issues of e-filing system have been removed at FBR Portal. The taxpayers & tax consultants are making maximum use of the e-Filing system of FBR. Speed of return filing was about 500 returns per hour and fillings were received electronically on weekly holidays that are about one third of the returns received electronically last year. FBR has made special arrangements of brisk bandwidth through which the bandwidth pipe is expanded automatically based on the workload of return filers.
IRIS system did not create any problems for the taxpayers, however, some taxpayers and practitioners were reluctant to accept few changes. Moreover, IRIS was a new system and there is a general resistance to any change among the people.
Und the guidance of Finance Ministry, FBR took a number of steps in order to facilitate the taxpayers including conducting countrywide seminars and workshops for tax officers, members of tax bar associations and chambers of commerce in which the participants were apprised of and given training on the new system.
Finance Ministry received good results of the above said measures because as a result of these efforts, more returns have been electronically filed for the Tax Year 2014 than ever before in the history of FBR which itself is a proof of the success of IRIS.
