THE Federal Board of Revenue is digitalising the process of tax payment and return filing and for this purpose has developed specially designed web-portals. However, as yet it has failed to come up with a final version for electronic tax management system.

The FBR has its own web site i.e. http://www.fbr.gov.pk/ in respect of direct and indirect taxes. An e-fbr portal http://e.fbr.gov.pk was developed for electronic payment of tax and filing of various tax returns. For a short time, there was another web-portal called Banxis which catered to the filing of returns of taxpayers under the jurisdiction of Large Taxpayers Units.

A year ago another new system was introduced i.e. https://iris.fbr.gov.pk. Initially this system was designed for the filing of income tax returns only, whereas, tasks related to tax payment and filing of monthly statement were performed on the http://e.fbr.gov.pk portal. Recently, the FBR shifted all functions from e-fbr to IRIS.

This new system is facing teething problems and is yet to be made free of hitches and glitches.

The returns filed by taxpayers have a legal sanctity and to protect that sanctity the new system is required to be given legal binding force through an official code. However, the tax payers are astonished that to date, https://iris.fbr.gov.pk has not been notified as the official web portal for filing of return and statements under the Income Tax Ordinance, 2001.

The missing legal link is very important to provide legal sanctity to the declarations filed on this new portal. The FBR must immediately address this issue.

Shams Ansari

Karachi

Published in Dawn, September 28th , 2015

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