Industrialists have raised their voice over the issues / problems in the Federal Board of Revenue’s (FBR) IRIS portal of National Single Sales Tax Returns.

Even after the FBR had already extended the date to file the sales tax returns for the month of January till February 25, 2022.

Exporters were still unable to file the returns in time “because a lot of glitches still persist in IRIS,” Towel Manufacturers Association of Pakistan Chairman Kashif Mehtab Chawla said in a statement.

“New Iris Portal replaced the old system of (PRAL) by the Federal Board of Revenue which was more user-friendly and its users have become well aware of its functions. But we are unable to understand why the FBR has shifted it to a new portal and created problems for its users”, he said.

He said that the FBR has claimed that the refund of sales tax through the newly installed system to the exporters on time.

However, the exporters are facing lots of problems in filing their monthly sales tax returns to get refunds.

They are unable to file their sales tax returns on time. He said that the National Single Sales Tax Return is not functioning properly because ‘annexure H’ in the system has many issues.

Topline Securities analyst Saad Ziker told The Express Tribune that due to technical issues in IRIS, the exporters were facing difficulties in recording the sales tax returns, which would ultimately delay their refunds. “This could impact the cash flow of exporters, hence they could face liquidity crunch,” the analyst cautioned.

The FBR has even already extended the date of monthly sales Tax for the month of January 2022 up to 25-02-2022 but the exporters are still unable to complete their filing timely due to these issues.

Issues with National Single Sales Tax Returns

The individual supplier business names are not appearing in both annexures A and C. The users are not getting sum of total amount in last row of annexures.

When users record sales in this iris portal, suppliers’ names do not appear there.

They are also unable to get the total of annexure H because sum of total is not appearing in annexure H last row.

After the submission of the sales tax return, users cannot see the supplier’s and customer’s names like as annexure A and C of earlier return of PRAL.

The FBR from time to time changed the procedure of sales tax refund, which ultimately creates problems as well as delay in the process of exporters refund amounts.

Due to this, exporters’ a vast amount is stuck with the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR), which are making them face financial problems. For them, It is a major hurdle in fulfilling international buyers’ orders.

“We, on behalf of the Export oriented industry, strongly demand the continuation simultaneously of the both systems of Sales tax refunds to the exporters,” the Towel Manufactures Association (TMA) Chairman said.

Source: The Express Tribune / Business Recorder Published on 26th February 2022.