ISLAMABAD, Sept 24: The Central Board of Revenue (CBR) on Saturday formally launched electronic filing of income tax returns for the tax-year 2005 to facilitate the taxpayers.

Member Information Management Science Aamir Z. Chaudhry told Dawn that for electronic filing of income tax returns, taxpayers would need to acquire digital signature from National Institutional Facilitation Technologies (Pvt) Limited.

He said that initially the charges fixed for digital signature stood at Rs5,000.

Mr Chaudhry said electronic filing of return was specially attractive for Income Tax Practitioners (ITPs), Chartered Accountant (CA) firms, who file multiple returns on behalf of their clients.

The member said in section 114 a new sub-section (2A) has been inserted, which provided that a return of income filed electronically on the web or any other magnetic media or any other computer readable media, would be considered as valid income tax return for the tax-year 2005 and onwards.

Necessary amendments have also been made in the Income Tax Ordinance 2001 to enable ITPs to file tax returns electronically on behalf of their clients from the tax-year 2005, he added.

The member said that with only one digital signature, the ITPs or CA firms could file all returns of their clients. He said that special procedures have been worked out for such electronic inter-mediators where they would be authorized by their clients for filing returns on their behalf and would keep physical record of the taxpayers — affidavit, utility bills etc.

For electronic filing of returns, the forms could be downloaded from the CBR’s website: www.cbr.gov.pk. There are two kinds of tax return forms — one form included formula for calculation of taxes along with necessary guidelines for filling the form. While the other form did not have these facilities. These forms would be sent through CBR email address: incometax.returns @cbr.gov.pk.

According to the member, electronic filing of sales tax returns has already been introduced at Large Taxpayers Unit (LTU), Karachi. Similarly, the CBR has started a pilot project of filing of goods declaration electronically in the customs reform project recently. These technology endeavours would reflect favourable to put Pakistan visibility on the e-government road map, he added.