Date for Filing Income Tax returns Extended

The Federal Board of Revenue (FBR), has decided to extend the date for filing Income Tax returns till October 15. The decision came late on Thursday evening what the FBR notification terms as because of serious technical problems in the filing of online returns in the Iris portal. Earlier the FBR authorities had reiterated multiple times that there would be no extension in the date for filing of returns. On Thursday and Friday, the FBR authorities had extended working hours to facilitate the filing of returns and tax payments.

The tax collecting body informed that till Sep 28 they had received around 1.4 million tax returns and only on 28 Sep they received 150000 thousand of them. "The system is working seamlessly and around 150,000 returns were filed on Sept 28 which was the highest ever number filed in a single day. In the meantime, FBR, like last year has enhanced its system capacity to provide seamless services to taxpayers,” FBR officials reported on Wednesday.

It was however brought to the notice of the authorities that there has been a serious issue in the e-filing of tax returns. There were a lot many complaints about the failure of the Iris portal. Earlier the government had engaged national heroes to carry out an extensive campaign to urge the people to file their returns in compliance with the law of the state as well as for the progress and prosperity of the country.

The Karachi Tax Bar Association (KTBA) had also requested the Prime Minister to extend the deadline by at least three months so as to enable the taxpayers as well as the new filers of returns to do away with the technical issues involved in the process. The KTBA further highlighted that both the e-FBR and Iris portal remained dysfunctional for several days that further aggravated the issue. Keeping in view such demands of the business community as well as the technical issues faced by the system the deadline was extended.