FBR Rebuts News Story Published by a Newspaper
FBR Rebuts News Story Published by a Newspaper:. Federal Board of Revenue(FBR) has categorically rejected the news item published in a newspaper that FBR system is under a major ‘cyber attack‘. This news item was published as on August 15, 2022. However, FBR clarified that some of it’s system was stopped to work for maintenance purpose on week holidays. However, rest of the services were still working and no payment system was stopped and custom system (GDs etc.,) was working very smoothly.
Only a Misleading to the Taxpayers
FBR also highlighted that it created a mislead to the public that some cyber attack hit the website of the revenue authority. “Story published was not based on the facts”, FBR said.
Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) also clarified that:
- We periodically inform the taxpayers that Iris module is going to launch and upgrade the system,
- During National holidays IT Wing of FBR took their time to upgrade the systems, migrate and cleanse data.
- Only the return filing system was taken off-line at 22:00 hours on 13th August, 2022.
- However, all revenue generating services were fully functional.
- Weboc, Pakistan Single Window(PSW) and Point of Sale services remained operational.
FBR Revenue Generation System Progress During Public Holidays
FBR also explained that during the National Holidays:
- around 9000 new GDs were filed from August 13 to 15 noon time
- over 11000 GDs were cleared during the same period
- resulting in collection of over 12 Billion of duties and taxes at import stage.
- during these two days, over 3.2 million invoices were issued by Tier-1 Retailers integrated with FBR POS System across the country, charging around 1 Billion Sales Tax.
Premier Revenue Authority of Pakistan also said, “These numbers sufficiently testify to the fact that all revenue collection related services remained actively operational in these two days, as against the false assertions made in the subject news item.”
