The Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) has received record number of 2.163 million income tax returns for the tax year 2021 up to October 11, 2021.

According to media reports here on Monday that the response of the taxpayers is very encouraging in filing of annual income tax returns for the tax year 2021.

Tax Collections for Income Tax Returns for Tax Year 2021

Tax collections with 2.163 million income tax returns for tax year 2021 has also increased. The FBR had collected Rs 39 billion tax along with 1.86 million income tax returns filed till September 30, 2021. The FBR’s “IRIS” portal is working properly, but people are not utilizing its full potential.

This year FBR had timely uploaded forms for filing of income tax returns for TY 2021 on July 1, 2021 and thus, provided taxpayers the statutory time period of 90 days to file their annual income tax returns by September 30, 2021.

Public campaign by FBR to encourage taxpayers to file their tax returns

FBR launched a media campaign on mainstream electronic and print media to maximize its targets and awareness. Besides, the FBR also engaged with national heroes and celebrities to spread the same message on social media.

All cellular companies were also mobilized to send customized messages to their 130 million combined subscribers, all over the the country.

Public campaign reached every household and motivated general public about the importance of annual tax compliance. This resulted in an enormous traffic of taxpayers on the FBR IRIS website and for the first time ever over 1.8m income tax returns were filed within 90 days ending on September 30.

Tax returns submissions up to previous deadline

Only in September 28-30 (three days), the FBR had received around 600,000 income tax returns from all over Pakistan. This extraordinary interest in existing and new taxpayers put huge pressure on FBR Iris online portal, which caused occasional disruptions and adversely affected its functional efficiency, particularly on September 30 being the last day. Keeping in view the disturbance in website and technical issues, the FBR notified one-time extension of 15 days on September 30 and extended the return filing deadline till October 15, 2021.

FBR Stance regarding further extension in filing income tax returns for tax year 2021

It is expected that the taxpayers both old and new will benefit from this extended timeline and thus, file their tax returns well ahead of the final date i.e. October 15. It is further reminded that the extension given on September 30 was only due to the fact that the FBR Iris website got overloaded and since that has been fixed now, no more extension will be allowed beyond October 15, 2021.