ISLAMABAD: The Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) on Friday extended the date of filing of income tax returns/statements till Oct 31 for the tax year 2014.

This is the second extension as earlier the date was extended from Aug 31 to Sept 30.

According to an official statement, the extension was approved by Finance Minister Ishaq Dar, who said: “There were a large number of appeals, conveyed in writing, through SMSs, fax and phone calls, with people complaining about difficulties in filing tax returns.”

A total of 840,675 returns were filed for the tax year 2013.

In the budget 2014-15, the government introduced various measures to increase the cost of taxation for those taxpayers who did not file their tax returns with the income tax department.

Tax officials believe that the number of filers will cross one million this year as most people would want to avail lower tax rates.

The date of filing of returns of total income/statements of final taxation of companies whose tax year ends between July 1, 2013 to Dec 31, 2013 due on or before Sept 30, 2014 was extended up to Oct 31, 2014 provided that the admitted liability of tax due with return was deposited by Sept 30, 2014.

The total number of corporate taxpayers which filed tax returns stood at 25,046 in tax year 2013 against 61,989 companies registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan.

As many as 10,639 corporate taxpayers did not pay tax in the year 2013. Though these companies filed tax returns, they paid zero taxes.

Collection timings

The Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) on Friday extended the timings for collection of duties and taxes of the last two days of this month.

All field offices of FBR and authorised branches of the State Bank of Pakistan, National Bank and National Institute of Facilitation Technologies will remain open on Sept 29 till 8pm and on Sept 30 till 10pm.

Published in Dawn, September 27th, 2014