FACILITATING accurate and timely filing of tax returns by taxpayers is a crucial task. Unfortunately, the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) portal fails to do any such thing. There is no such thing as facilitation as one deals with the system. All one gets is a whole lot of frustration.

Recently, some of my friends whose SIMs have been blocked by FBR tried to log into the portal’s Integrated Risk Information System (Iris) portion. They had forgotten their password, and, as such, clicked on the ‘forgot password’ tab in order to reset their password.

A screen promptly appeared asking them to enter their phone number, service-provider’s name, CNIC number, and registered email address. They kept filling each box one after the other, but when they reached the entry section for the email, and entered the registered address, all the previous entries simply disappeared. They kept trying and trying, but despite repeated attempts, they were unable to reset their password. As a result, they failed to file their tax returns as well. Will someone at FBR resolve this issue?

Syed Talha Shahab
Karachi

Published in Dawn, July 28th, 2024