ISLAMABAD: Federal Tax Ombudsman (FTO) has advised the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) to simplify income tax return forms in consultation with stakeholders to facilitate the taxpayers.
In its proposals for the budget 2021/2022, the FTO recommended simplification of returns forms in consultations with small taxpayers along with availability of option of filing the returns in Urdu.
Similarly, an option to file the returns manually with facility provided by the FBR to upload on line data was also proposed.
The FBR in response to the FTO stated that simplified Income Tax Returns for salaried, small traders having turnover up to Rs10 million, manufacturing Small & Medium Enterprises (SME’s) having turnover up to Rs50 million have been issued.
It was recommended that FBR should devise some system so that sunset date of filing return is not extended but late filing may be allowed with certain incremental penalty for delay in filing per month or any part of it.
The FBR responded that in 2020, last date of December 08 was not extended. According to FBR, Income Tax Return making rules have been issued. Though these are applicable for Tax Year 2022 but FBR is following this for Tax Year 2021 and return forms would be available by 1st July (to be submitted within due date without extension on last date).
The FTO proposed that FBR may approach the concerned Authorities/Establishment Division, to issue instructions to bind the heads of government departments, autonomous bodies and large scale public sector organizations to get the certificate of filing of returns by their employees falling in the tax net at the end of the last date and to link their promotion/annual increments with mandatory return filing.
Regarding audit, it was proposed to rationalize its parameters so that more focus should be laid on large entities rather than small taxpayers.
Moreover audits should also include investigative work to detect the evasion through a study of input/output standards of utility bills and production capacity of machinery etc. Several cases for audit should in line with capacity of FBR to complete the audit in a year.
