FBR concerned over delay in small amounts refunds

The Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) has expressed serious concern over considerable delay in clearance of pending refunds involving meagre amounts of Rs 50,000 and below. Sources told Business Recorder here on Monday that the issue of delay in refunds was discussed in the last Board-in-Council meeting convened under the chairmanship of the former FBR Chairman Sohail Ahmed.
During the Board-in-Council, it was decided to amend the Income Tax Rules to further simplify the procedure for payment of refund involving Rs 25,000 to Rs 50,000. In this way, the refund payments involving meagre amounts would be made to the claimants through a simplified procedure.
Board-in-council noted with concern that the refunds involving small amounts are still pending which is a cause of concern for the tax authorities. FBR officials have expressed concern that the refund claims up to Rs 50,000 are still withheld in the field formations which needs to be cleared on top priority basis, sources added.
It is worth mentioning that the FBR had constituted a Task Force to expedite clearance of the stuck up in the field formations, resulting in considerable delay in payments of admissible refund claims. The Bard had constituted the Task Force to ensure expeditious issuance of the valid/legitimate held up sales tax refunds. The Task Force was sset up in Karachi, Lahore and Faisalabad to clear pending refunds on top priority basis.
A tax official said that the Task Force is legally authorised to clear only admissible refund claims. If the claimant has submitted incomplete documents it would not be possible for the task force to process such claims. Due to this reason, the Task Force is regularly submitting information about the deferred claims to the Board. Only admissible claims with all relevant documents would be processed and sanctioned to the applicants. Even in certain cases, the refund claimants are unaware of the fact that they have to file claim electronically. In such cases, the manually claimed refunds have been rejected due to non-fulfilment of major conditions. If the basic condition for claiming refund is electronic filing of claim, the manually filed claims would not be entrained.