The taxpayers registered with Karachi Large Taxpayers Unit (LTU) will be filing tax returns through a web-based program from July 1. The Central Board of Revenue (CBR), in its efforts to computerise the taxation system has introduced various facilities to taxpayers in the new program, including e-filing, e-payment and end-to-end process till e-refund.
In this regard, a briefing was held at Karachi LTU on Saturday to educate the taxpayers about the new online system. Mukhtar Ahmed Gondal, Karachi LTU Director General, said that CBR had taken various measures to facilitate the taxpayers through reform process.
CBR also aimed to reduce interaction of taxpayers with tax officials and introduced several IT-based solutions, he added. The LTU was selected for this program, which started as pilot project, because the taxpayers registered with this unit are well documented and have the ability to understand the newly launched web-based program.
He said that in the past taxpayers were hovering around banks and tax offices for their payments and were facing difficulties, but now they are provided simple steps to file returns, payments and refunds after registration with CBR's tax collection web site.
He said that the tax department program was finalised after consensus of all stakeholders, and was still seeking feedback. The LTU DG said that all decisions in the federal budget 2007-08 were taken after consultation with stakeholders.
About audit, he said that the measure was taken to find out areas of misdeclaration, ignorance about the law, misinterpretation of law and, finally, surveillance of tax evasion.
Aminullah, Chief of Information Management System (IMS) said that the web-based program would be easily run at all operating system. About the internet speed, he said that a normal internet speed required to open all pages of this web site. At the briefing, several questions were raised about this system that were rectified by the IT officials of the tax department.