KARACHI, Sept 15: The Regional Commissioner of Income Tax (RCIT), southern region, has made elaborate arrangements to receive tax returns. Three tax facilitation centres (TFCs) have been opened in the main tax offices of the region in the city.

The southern region tax offices are presently housed in several buildings in the city owing to on-going renovation of Income Tax House on Ataturk Road. Therefore, three separate TFCs have been opened to facilitate the taxpayers.

According to official sources a TFC is already functioning at the 7th floor of Hashoo Centre, Saddar, but two new TFCs--one at Income Tax House and another at Income Tax office in Red Crescent building near Cantt. Station--will start functioning from September 20, 2006.

These centres will be manned by the officers of commissioners’ rank to ensure smooth and foolproof arrangements, including availability of tax return forms and sufficient staff to help taxpayers in filing their returns.

Regional Commissioner of Income Tax Karachi Region Abrar Ahmed has issued directives and guidelines to all the income tax commissioners with regard to procedures to be followed for maintaining records on daily basis of tax returns received by these centres.

All returns of the southern region Karachi (other than those pertaining to the jurisdiction of medium taxpayer unit (MTU) Karachi) received at various TFCs will be sent to commissioner Income Tax Enforcement Division.

It would be required to maintain record of all returns on a daily basis in special registers to be made available to these TFCs. The record of returns showing refunds will be maintained in a separate register.

For maintaining proper record and information on daily basis showing number of returns filed, tax paid and refunds claimed etc a prescribed format has been circulated to all TFCs for compliance.

The photocopies of all returns filed will be made so that they could be made available for data entry as and when required by the Pakistan Revenue Automation Ltd (Pral).

The commissioner of income tax MTU Karachi has also been asked to carry out similar functions in respect of returns pertaining to his jurisdiction except that he will not send any bunch of tax returns to Pral, but would ensure prompt data entry through MTU’s own system.