Income tax 2011: taxpayers facing difficulty in filing returns

Taxpayers are facing immense difficulties in filing income tax returns for year 2011 due to faults in the return form. According to complaint received from Imtiaz Abbas Hussain, FCA, consultant, although the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) keeps extending the date of filing of income tax return for year 2011 with the aim to facilitate the taxpayers, it has completely failed to address the issues raised in the web portal of income tax return.
It said that 15 percent surcharge on income tax is still showing in the said income tax return as proportionate net tax chargeable for 3.5 months on whole year income by showing the following formulae, which is absolutely wrong and not in accordance with the provisions of section 4A of the Income Tax Ordinance, 2001 and as a result many taxpayers will have to pay excess surcharge of thousands of rupees while extended date of filing return is getting closure.
According to section 4A of the Income Tax Ordinance 2001, surcharge shall be payable by every taxpayer at 15 percent of the income tax payable for the period from March 16 2011 to June 30 2011. It means all tax accrued during these period will attract surcharge.
The section also said that surcharge would not be payable for "tax" which is payable for tax tear 2010 and prior tax years. It means tax accrued during 16 March 2011 to 30 June 2011 will only attract surcharge.. So, it is clear that 15 percent surcharge on income tax is to be paid on tax payable (accrued) only during March 16 2011 to June 30 2011 with the understanding that taxpayer should not relax with payment of surcharge that is why it says that whenever tax paid, surcharge should also pay at the same time.
FBR calculating surcharge on income tax on proportionate basis, which is absolutely wrong because if a taxpayer has huge income during the period from July 1 2010 to March 15 2011 and has no income during the period from March 16 2011 to June 30 2011 will have to pay surcharge as per FBR formulae which is against to the provisions of section 4A. It is suggested that surcharge on income tax be shown in "manual" in income tax return as formulae could not work in any case as taxpayer may show working of surcharge on income tax only for the period from March 16 2011 to June 30 2011.