Income tax returns: Pakistan salaried class encountering problems

ISLAMABAD: The salaried individuals are unable to file their annual income tax returns for the tax year 2025 due to a serious error in the Federal Board of Revenue’s (FBR) “IRIS portal”.

At the time of submission of salary return, a message is being displayed at the “IRIS portal”, “Please enter correct receipt value”, which is unable to be rectified despite repeated attempts of tax experts and lawyers. The FBR’s helpline is also unable to guide taxpayers to rectify this error.

This requires an immediate extension in date for filing of income tax returns for the salaried class facing problems in return filing due to some technical errors in the system.

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In this regard, a compliant has been filed with the Federal Tax Ombudsman (FTO) on Friday.

According to a complaint filed by tax lawyer Khurram Shahzad with the FTO, the complaint is being filed under section 10 of the Federal Tax Ombudsman Ordinance, 2000 against a very crucial and sensitive episode of maladministration highlighting professional inefficiency and incompetence on the part of the FBR-IT Wing.

The complainant is a registered income tax practitioner (ITP) with the FBR and in the process of filing annual income tax returns of his clients for the Tax Year 2025, a serious error in the FBR-IRIS portal has emerged, particularly for salary income tax returns of individuals.

The portal is repeatedly showing an unexplainable error with the remarks:

“Please enter correct receipt value”, without providing any guidance or indication as to where the error lies and how it can be rectified (evidence attached).

The complainant and thousands of other taxpayers have approached FBR through the official email system for clarification. However, the replies received are generic, vague and non-responsive, offering no practical solution and instead creating more complications in the filing process.

The statutory deadline for filing returns (30th September 2025) is rapidly approaching. Due to these unresolved IT glitches, there is a strong likelihood that taxpayers will fail to file their returns on time, thereby being wrongfully declared inactive under the Income Tax Ordinance, 2001.

The systemic failure will not only cause grave hardship and harassment to taxpayers but will also result in substantial revenue loss to the national exchequer, contrary to the mandate of FBR.

The conduct of FBR Wings amounts to maladministration as defined in Section 2(3) of the FTO Ordinance, 2000, being arbitrary, inefficient, unresponsive and against the principles of transparency and good governance.

In the light of the foregoing, tax experts have requested the FTO to take cognizance of this matter and declare the above acts/omissions of FBR Wings as maladministration and direct the Chairman FBR to immediately resolve the IRIS portal error and extend necessary facilitation to taxpayers for filing their income tax returns without technical hindrance.

FTO should issue strict instructions to ensure that the IT Wing is restructured with professional experts to prevent recurrence of such lapses in future.

FTO should recommend extension of the return filing deadline, if required, to safeguard taxpayers’ rights and protect government revenue, tax lawyers added.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2025