PTBA points out multiple errors & glitches in IRIS portal

LAHORE: The Pakistan Tax Bar Association (PTBA) has pointed out multiple errors and glitches in the online filing of tax returns and urged the Chairman Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) to provide statutory period of clear 90 days for submission of tax returns after the portal is error free.

Rana Munir Hussain and Ch Qamar-uz-Zaman, President and Secretary General of PTBA respectively, have written a letter to Chairman FBR, pointing out that the tax returns being uploaded on the portal are full of deficiencies. Also, they said, frequent changes in return/statement forms on the portal without notifying the changes has become norm of the day which is unlawful and likely to start the new end of litigation.

In addition, they said, a large number of returns for Tax Year 2023 were fed and uploaded on the portal for submissions by the PTBA members from various Bars of the country. However, on 01-09-2023 the IRIS module on the portal was changed all of a sudden and made it compulsory for taxpayers to work out their tax liability under section 7E of the Income Tax Ordinance, 2001, which is illegal and without lawful authority.

According to the PTBA, the new IRIS portal is continuously showing/creating login, password and pin code problem. It is continuously showing calculation and data saving problem and most of time buttons shows unresponsiveness which causes loss of data entered besides increasing the risk of error and mistakes.

It neither shows the special Tax Year in the current return forms for the Tax Year 2023 nor retrieves complete data from the previous year, which is leading to various types of mistakes. It is calculating incorrect depreciation against the provisions of section 23 read with the part-II, 3rd Schedule of the Income Tax Ordinance, 2001.

Presently, the IRIS portal is calculating/charging the excess/incorrect tax liability on income covered under section 153 of the Ordinance on the basis of fixed/predefined wrong formulas due to which the taxpayers are bound to pay high tax instead of their actual tax liability, which is against the spirit of self-declaration and present scheme of law. De-freezing of attribution tabs and enabling the taxpayers to enter correct figures/data to file their return in time may resolve the issue.

They have also pointed out that the new IRIS module is illegally requiring Commissioner’s approval in such cases where revision of Income Tax Return is made within 60 days without filing of original return, which is against the provisions of section 114(6) of the Income Tax Ordinance, 2001.

The challan generation of withholding income tax is still in old system which is very slow and time consuming. It is need of the time to provide facility of generation all type of challans in IRIS e-portal to save the precious time and facilitation.

Another issue regarding the downloading of Computerized Payment Receipt (CPR), the system shows message “Challan/CPR does not Exist” against the valid CPR duly deposited in the national exchequer.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2023