ISLAMABAD, July 7: The Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) has decided to conduct a data-cleansing exercise primarily to collect National Tax Numbers (NTN) from those sales tax registered persons.

An official announcement issued here on Saturday said the decision was taken to collect NTNs of those taxpayers who have not obtained their NTN or failed to supply it to the sales tax department.

Sales tax database reveals that there are 8,442 sales tax registered persons who do not have NTN; resultantly these registered persons will face hardship in filing of Sales Tax returns during the current financial year 2007-08.

The letters are being sent to all such persons asking them to provide their NTN to Central Registration Office (CRO) for database update. All registered persons are, therefore, further advised to supply their NTN in Sales Tax database immediately either by using URL “Sales Tax Registration Status” on the CBR official Website “www.cbr. gov.pk” to avoid any problem in returns filing.