ISLAMABAD: Prime Minister Imran Khan is likely to launch the Federal Board of Revenue’s new single sales tax portal for filing of single sales tax returns by all federal and provincial sales taxpayers from November 2021.

According to the details released by the FBR Tuesday, building further on its vision to facilitate taxpayers and ensure ease of doing business through automation, digitization, and minimization of human interaction with taxpayers, the FBR is all set to launch single sales tax portal during this month.

This landmark initiative has been made possible after thorough discussions with the provincial revenue authorities of Punjab, Sindh, KPK, Balochistan, and AJK. This facility will enable taxpayers to file single monthly Sales Tax returns instead of multiple returns (6 in the past) on different portals; thereby, significantly reducing the time and cost of compliance, and thus achieving maximum efficiency.

The system would be intelligent enough to sift and collect revenues from a single taxpayer and distribute the same among multiple revenue agencies.

This unique project would also help in resolving the long outstanding issues of input tax adjustment among relevant stakeholders.

With the proposed launch of Single Sales Tax Portal later this month, the existing cumbersome and tedious processes would be replaced with an efficient & automated system of tax adjustments, with minimum human involvement.

The Portal would also be beneficial for tax collectors in having a 360-degrees view of taxpayers’ business activities across the country in order to maximize revenue potential and tax compliance.

By all standards, this is a giant leap forward in taxpayers’ facilitation and at the same time, a significant step in harmonization of taxes between federal and provincial governments. Prime Minister of Pakistan is likely to launch this mega national initiative, later this month, the FBR added.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2021