ISLAMABAD, Oct 5: Majority of taxpayers are not serious in filing their income tax returns properly as some omission and mistakes were found in the returns.

An official report prepared by Central Board of Revenue (CBR) revealed that out of 1.23 million returns filed during tax year 2004 around 30,000 returns had no information on income, as the entries had numeric zero.

This means that the effective number of return filers has reduced from 1.23 million to 1.20 million. Relatively stating, the problem is far too serious for the corporate sector where out of 12,526 filed returns, 2,702 or 21.6 per cent had all numeric zero entries, leaving the balance of 9,824 returns for further analysis.

The CBR is facing this problem to ensure proper filing of income tax returns during the tax year 2005 as well. However, they have yet to come up with any solution to the problem.

According to the report, the returns of the corporate sector have further been investigated with respect to those tax filers who have declared business income or losses or they of lodged nil claims.

Interestingly, 3,888 (39 per cent) of the return filers of this sector have declared business income in their returns, while 2,994 (30 per cent) have shown business losses and an equal number have submitted nil statement.

This number also includes 2,702 returns where the income entry is zero. Thus, it is safe to assert that out of 12,526 return filers only 3,888 or 31 per cent of them have paid income tax and the rest 69 per cent taxpayers have either declared business losses or there is nil income to declare.

The report further says the returns are fretfully deficient in terms of completeness of information. The information indicates that around 0.7 million or 56.9 per cent returns are deficient. This number would have been much higher (close to around 90 per cent) if salary statements, statements U/S 115(4) and statements of retailers had been included.

Invariably, the relevant cells are either incomplete or have been left blank. It is evident that 8.4 per cent of submitted returns are deficient, as NTN is either incomplete or not stated, in 3.3 per cent of cases the information on National Identification Card is missing, in 3.7 per cent of cases the name has not been revealed and so on. Surprisingly, the problem is serious with respect to the corporate sector, which supposedly is relatively well documented.

Besides, the deficiency in return filing, the report says the detailed particulars of taxpayers are also not available to ascertain their financial strength.

While probing the returns from another angle, whether the computation of gross tax paid by the corporate sector is according to the normal tax rates fixed for the public, private and banking companies or deviated from it, there had been strange outcome.

To recapitulate, the rate of taxation for public companies has been 35 per cent, private companies 41 per cent and banking companies 44 per cent. The data indicates that out of 841 returns of the baking companies, the gross tax of only 24 cases was tallied with the normal tax rate.

Similarly, the total numbers of return of public companies were 1907, but the tax rate of only 236 cases was matched with the normal tax rate. Likewise for 6,942 returns of private companies, the gross tax of 2518 cases was matched with the normal tax rate.

This confirms that there is a need for detailed component-wise investigation of the corporate sector so as to reach any meaningful conclusion, added the report.