Taxpayers will be unable to meet the deadline for e-filing of income tax returns for Tax Year 2014-15, due to several technical flaws in the FBR's newly launched IRIS software, tax experts said on Friday. According to experts, although efforts made by the FBR to develop IRIS software using in-house resources are laudable indeed, no consultations were held with the stakeholders which caused problems in e-filing of income tax returns.
The software has bugs that rendered the taxpayers unable to fulfil legal obligations until the deadline, they added. They said the IRIS software, which was supposed to allow taxpayers to view prescribed form of return after submission, only shows return summary, creating difficulties for tax practitioners also. Similarly, Karachi Tax Bar Association (KTBA) has also highlighted serious problems being faced by its members in the preparations for return forms. In a letter sent to FBR Chairman Tariq Bajwa, KTBA said e-intermediaries who were the member of this Bar were facing serious problems while preparing the return forms uploaded on the website.
It said after the launch of IRIS software, e-filing the returns for Tax Year 2014 became a formidable task. "There is another serious problem with IRIS which restricts the use of sub-users accounts which is usually operated through a master account as used by every e-intermediary in terms of section 223 of the Income Tax Ordinance, 2001," the letter said.
It said each firm of professionals who had a large number of clients and registered at web portal as e-intermediary, hence, they needed multiple sub-users to file income tax returns for the Tax Year 2014 on behalf of their clients without further loss of time. Before the advent of IRIS, the staff of KTBA members enjoying the status of e-intermediary used to access the web portal through their respective sub-user/child account and never faced any issue with regard to e-filing of the returns. But, now they have been restricted by IRIS to use their sub-user/child accounts. It may be noted that login via the master account ID by all sub-users creates a number of security/administrative issues for the principal e-intermediary such as:
a) The staff logging in via the master account will have the right to delete clients from the e-intermediary clients' data base available at the web portal.
b) Such staff will have the right to create further sub-user accounts at the web portal.
c) There will be no control/track as to which staff has e-filed which client's tax return/withholding tax statement and other documents such as PSID, etc. The KTBA requested the board to allow sub-user accounts in its newly launched IRIS software to provide maximum relief to the stakeholders. Rana Ahmed, CEO Pral and head of IRIS project was not available for comments.