KARACHI: Karachi Tax Bar Association (KTBA) has asked Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) to issue clarification regarding filing withholding tax statement following amendment made through Finance Supplementary (Second Amendment) Act, 2019.
In a letter to FBR Member Inland Revenue Operations Ms. Seema Shakil, the KTBA said that the Finance Supplementary (Second Amendment) Act, 2019, which came into force on March 12, 2019, under which filing of monthly withholding tax statement under the Income Tax Ordinance, 2001 was done away with and was replaced with bi-annual withholding tax statement.
The KTBA said that since the Second Supplementary Act could not be passed before March 01, 2019, the earlier law for the monthly statement was very much in place, due to which, in most of the cases, the withholding agents continued filing till the month of February 2019, whose filling date was due on March 15, 2019.
This was done in the order to avoid any potential from the department as the new six monthly law did not get through by then.
“Now since after bi-annual statement has become the part of the law, the next filing date is falling due on or before July 31, 2019. This first six monthly withholding tax statement should ideally cover the six months starting from January 01, 2019 to June 30, 2019,” the KTBA said, adding that but since the monthly withholding tax statement for the month of January 2019 and February 2019 in most of the cases, have already been filed, that the first biannual withholding tax statement will consist of four months only from starting March 2019 to June 2019.
The KTBA said that a clarification from FBR was necessitated that the first bi-annual withholding tax statement will be acceptable even with only four months, and accordingly the due changes in the IRIS are directed to be made.
