LAHORE: The Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) has failed to rectify errors in national sales tax form as large number of taxpayers unable discharge their liabilities.

Pakistan Tax Bar Association (PTBA) in a letter to the chairman of Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) highlighted the issues in the national sales tax return and demanded to extend the date for filing monthly returns for the months of December 2021 and January 2022.

READ MORE: FBR further extends date for filing sales tax return

Earlier this month the PTBA highlighted the issues. A committee comprising PTBA General Secretary Ch. Qamar uz Zaman and another person Zahid Ateeq Choudhry pointed out the following issues:

»             Entering data in Annex-H is not functioning properly, especially, opening stocks are not available for consumption.

»             Zero rated purchases for the month are not transferred in Annex-F for consumption, hence, creating discrepancy in relation to refund claim as well as income tax declaration.

»             FASTER rules for pharma industry, which is made subject to zero rated regime through Finance (Supplementary) Act, 2022, are not given until the date. Hence, the industry is unable to file refund claims.

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»             Input invoices once claimed are again available for reclaim in Annex-A. Hence, double claim of same input tax shall cause loss to the revenue.

»             Search option in Annex-A is limited to 100 invoices, only. It should search all invoices for the month so that hassle be reduced or eliminated.

»             Reduce rate sales entered through “sales invoice template” are not validated due to error “rate id is missing” despite proper reduced rate is provided in relevant data field.

»             Sales entered through “sales invoice template” are not editable.

READ MORE: FBR launches sales tax return filing through single portal

»             Option to undo “sales invoice template” once uploaded should be available, which helps in undoing mistake, especially in large number of invoices, presently have to be done one-by-one.

»             Sales tax Withheld by Government departments are not still available for claim.

»             In Annexure-C “Retail Consumer” Type is not available.

»             Sales Related to POS along with manual entry sales without POS, if added through invoice management, manual entries are not loaded in Annexure-C.

»             Exclusion from 8B in return column # 24 is not available, in many cases which does not fall in any of the STGO’s of POS integration but also disallowing the input credit as POS retailer.

»             Exporter cum manufacturer, where refund amount or credit to be carried forwarded are shown in decimal.

Issues in connection with Provincial Sales Tax Return for Services:

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»             The National Sales Tax Return is not transmitting data relating to supplies of goods to the taxpayers registered for sales tax on services despite the fact their suppliers have duly filed their National Sales Tax Returns, hence, service providers are deprived of their legitimate adjustable input tax claim.

In the light of the aforesaid facts and legal exposition, the date of filing of Sales Tax Return for the Tax Period December-2021 and January-2022 should be extended up to February 25, 2022.