Faulty Iris increases hiccups for tax filers

KARACHI: Taxpayers were facing immense problems in filing their annual income tax returns as the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) web portal kept crashing and stopped responding during the day, tax practitioners said on Monday.

October 31, 2016 has been set as the last date for filing income tax return by FBR for salaried, business individuals and persons falling in the final tax regime. Further, the companies falling in the special tax year have also been made liable to file their annual return by this date. 

Rehan Jafri, President, Karachi Tax Bar Association (KTBA) told The News that Iris – the FBR’s e-filing portal – was responding slow on Sunday, October 30, and it almost hanged the next day, which was the last date for filing the returns. He, however, said the portal was perfectly functional two days back, ie Saturday, October 29, 2016.  “The tax bar has already intimated the FBR that there are problems on the Iris, and taxpayers are facing (trouble) filing their returns,” Jafri said, and added that in the latest communication, the FBR was informed the online portal would be stuck, owing to heavy return filing load on the last dates.

The FBR had already extended the date to October 31 from August 30 for salaried individuals and from September 30 for business, association of persons (AOPs), final tax regime, and for companies under special tax year. The return filing for tax year 2016 was not encouraging; as sources in the FBR believed less than 500,000 tax returns had been received by the cut off date. Tax practitioners and business community have demanded the FBR to further extend the last date as the prevailing difficulties on the Iris would not allow the taxpayers to file their returnsin-time.

The FBR estimated about 1.8 million tax returns for tax year 2016 owing to changes in the laws and increased gap in withholding tax rate for filers and non-filers. Although, these efforts have helped the FBR increase revenue collection, they so far failed to motivate taxpayers to declare their income.

The taxpayers faced similar Iris problems during tax year 2015 and FBR had no option but to extend the date several times. The FBR has received about 1.1 million tax returns for tax year 2015.  Sources in FBR Headquarter, Islamabad, said that the government was mulling to extend the date, considering problems on the Iris, and ongoing political strife in the capital city. The sources said that after approval from the prime minister, a notification would be issued in this regard.