ISLAMABAD: Pakistan Tax Bar Association (PTBA) on Tuesday demanded the tax authorities to extend the last date for filing sales tax return for the month of December 2021 because taxpayers have failed to make compliance due to technical issues on the IRIS portal.
The PTBA in a letter to the chairman of Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) informed about the glitches in filing the sales tax return or National Sales Tax Return and urged to extend the date for filing the monthly return for the period December 2021 up to February 15, 2022.
READ MORE: FBR further extends date for filing sales tax return
The actual cutoff date for filing sales tax return for December 2021 was January 18, 2021. However, due to problems on the national tax portal, the FBR extended the date twice; first extended up to January 24, 2022 and later it was further extended up to January 28, 2022.
Rana Munir Hussain, President, PTBA in its letter to the FBR chairman appreciated the initiative of single sales tax return for all federal and provincial taxpayers. However, at the same time he pointed out some challenges pertaining to IRIS system, which are still creating difficulty/issues due to the newly introduced IRIS module.
The PTBA received many request from its affiliated tax bars to take up the matter with FBR for extension in time for filing of Sales Tax Return for the Tax Period December-2021. All these written as well as verbal requests are revolving around the IRIS module technical issues, slow response of the system, errors and glitches on the part of FBR being faced by the taxpayers as well as professional/legal fraternity while filing Sales Tax Return through IRIS, without removing the pointed out inter alia, filing of correct sales tax returns is not possible, with the request to take up this matter on priority basis and matter in detail, is being discussed hereunder:
Name of Person is appearing instead of business name, whereas a business is registered instead of person under the sales tax law, which is creating hardship to identify the person/business entity.
Exclusion from 8B is not available where 80% sales of goods have been made under 3rd Schedule of the Sales Tax Act, 1990.
Withholding Sales Tax (WHST) credit is not available.
Revised return Tab is not available.
Sales Tax Rate for vehicle below 1000CC @ 12.5% is not available.
Registration Number editing facility is not available, which leads to deletion and re-entry of data/invoice.
Sales tax return filed by the individual taxpayer, where entries have been made through NTN, input credit to buyer is not available, which is causing hardship to file the return.
Sales or purchase invoices are not in chronological order (invoice number & date), which is difficult task to verify/re-check/reconcile the shuffled data/invoices.
Figures are shown in decimal numbers, which creates confusion at the time of calculating liability or verify the data/invoices.
Annexure-F is calculating double VAT (value Addition charged at import stage to commercial importer) or giving double credit of VAT, which will result into loss to National Exchequer.
No effect of debit or credit note is allowing the IRIS system (sales return shall be reported in Annexure-C (reduction in sales/sales tax payable), whereas purchase return shall be reported in Annexure-A (reduction in purchase/input tax credit).
Printing of return on three pages instead of one page (without annexures), a sheer wastage of national resources and loss of foreign exchange due to use of imported paper.
Printing of return without annexures is useless.
In the light of the aforesaid facts and legal exposition, the date of filing of Sales Tax Return for the Tax Period December-2021, the PTBA said, and demanded to extend the date up to 15th day of February 2022.
READ MORE: KTBA highlights anomalies in single sales tax return
