ISLAMABAD: The Federal Board of Revenue’s (FBR) electronic filing system is unable to serve taxpayers attempting to smoothly file their annual income tax returns and wealth statements for Tax Year 2026 on September 15 (Tuesday), according to the Lahore Tax Bar Association (LTBA PILC).
It is important to mention here that the news report has been based on the performance of the FBR system on Tuesday.
Chairman LTBA PILC, Waheed Butt, said that taxpayers, tax consultants, and lawyers across the country have been facing persistent technical glitches, delays, and disruptions on the IRIS portal, making it extremely difficult to complete the filing process within the stipulated time frame.
“FBR IT wing must concentrate on this issue seriously and inspect the IRIS response to taxpayer consultants and lawyers so that the tax return filing process should not be delayed,” Waheed Butt added.
He emphasised that the recurring malfunctioning of the IRIS system not only causes undue hardship to compliant taxpayers but also risks penalising them for delays that are entirely attributable to the tax authority’s own technical shortcomings.
Butt urged the FBR’s IT wing to take immediate and concrete steps to diagnose the root causes of the system’s poor performance, upgrade its server capacity and response infrastructure, and ensure that the portal can handle the surge in traffic that typically occurs as the filing deadline nears.
He further stated that the tax bar and its members remain ready to cooperate with FBR authorities in identifying specific technical bottlenecks being faced by the filing community, but stressed that a swift and effective resolution is necessary to protect taxpayers from unwarranted penalties, additional surcharges, or loss of statutory rights caused by system-side failures.
The LTBA PILC chairman also called upon the FBR to consider extending the filing deadline for Tax Year 2026 in light of the ongoing technical issues, to ensure that no genuine taxpayer is penalised due to circumstances beyond their control.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2026