PESHAWAR: The Sarhad Chamber of Commerce and Industry (SCCI) on Tuesday expressed reservations over a number of deficiencies and hiccups in the e-filing of income tax returns, commonly known as the IRIS system, which has caused delays in the timely filing of tax returns for 2020.It demanded the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) give a three-month extension in filing income tax returns for 2020 to facilitate taxpayers.
Engineer Maqsood Anwar Pervaiz said according to income tax ordinance 2001, financial year closes on 30th June of this year, while the last date of filing of income tax returns is fixed at 30th September 2020 under the section 118 (3) of the aforesaid ordinance.
However, he said, owing to unnecessary delays in uploading of draft return 2020 and delayed final notification of income tax return of this year, besides glitches in the IRIS system, taxpayers are being faced with enormous difficulties in timely filing of income tax returns.
The SCCI chief said the coronavirus pandemic hasn’t only brought negative impacts on the country’s economy, but it has created severe financial challenges and difficulties for taxpayers as well as slowing down the filling process of income tax returns for this year.
Maqsood Pervaiz said the IRIS system isn’t working smoothly, because of which taxpayers have faced difficulties in filing income tax returns 2020 owing to overloading the electronic system ‘IRIS’.
Furthermore, he informed that under section -118 of the income tax ordinance 2001, with the rule: 34 of the income tax rules – 2002, the time period for filing or income tax returns to be 90 days, while on the contrary only 14 days have been given between 17th and 30th September 2020, for filing of income tax return 2020, which is quite difficult for taxpayers to file tax returns in the aforementioned period.
Therefore, he urged the FBR to give a three months extension in the filing of income tax return 2020 in order to ease difficulties of the taxpayers, also it can make sure they timely file income tax returns.
