KARACHI: Pakistan Tax Bar Association (PTBA) has urged the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) to extend the last date for filing income tax returns up to December 31, 2019 for salaried and business individuals as around 1.6 million returns cannot be filed by October 31, 2019.
In a letter sent to FBR Chairman Syed Shabbar Zaidi, the PTBA said that by October 25, 2019 only 918,027 annual returns for tax year 2019 were filed, which meant around 65 percent or 1,738,449 returns out of 2.65 million filed for tax year 2018 are still pending even after extension of date till October 31, 2019.
The tax bar said that the draft return form for tax year 2019 for individuals, salaried individuals and Association of Persons (AOPs) was uploaded on August 23, 2019 through SRO 951 and final return was uploading on IRIS on September 2, 2019 through SRO 979, which shows lapse of statutory period of two months and all burden shifts on FBR.
The tax bar further stated that the manual return of income form for tax year 2019 was issued on September 27, 2019 through SRO 1160, so the small volume taxpayers could file their returns of income for the year 2019 within stipulated time.
The PTBA said that as per law and statutory time period for filing of income tax return is 90 days under section 118 of the Income Tax Ordinance, 2001 while on the contrary only 48 days were given so far between September 02 and October 31, 2019 for online filing and only 31 days available for manual filing.
It highlighted that the submission of returns for tax year 2018 was extended up to August 09, 2019, which means 11 months were given for last year and only one month has been given for latest year, which clearly shows injustice.
The FBR chairman has been informed that the traders have once again given call for strike on October 29 and 30 as well as political instability in all over the country is causing serious hardship for the bar members as well as to the taxpayers to file their returns 2019. The tax bar also pointed out difficulties on IRS for filing income tax returns.
