Section 165 of IT Ord: SRO to amend WHT statement shortly: FBR

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ISLAMABAD: The Federal Board of Revenue will shortly issue a statutory regulatory order (SRO) to amend the withholding tax statement filed under section 165 of the Income Tax Ordinance, 2001, allowing taxpayers additional identification tools, other than the National Tax Numbers (NTNs) and Computerized National Identity Card (CNIC) numbers.

Sources told Business Recorder here on Saturday that the draft SRO was vetted by the Ministry of Law and Justice and a notification would be issued during next week to amend the withholding tax statement under section 165 of the Income Tax Ordinance, 2001. According to sources, the FBR has already allowed additional identification to the withholding agents and now legal cover would be given through amendment to the statement filed under section 165 of the Ordinance 2001.

Details revealed that the decision would facilitate withholding agents in electronic submission of withholding tax statements. The Board has allowed additional identification types for the taxpayers which were earlier restricted to the NTNs and CNICs. Now, the new types of identification of taxpayers have been allowed including Free Tax Numbers (FTNs), Central Depository Company (CDC) number, bank account number, telephone/mobile number, passport number etc. These identification types have been allowed in addition to the NTN/CNIC in the withholding tax statements in special cases.

Sources said that a number of withholding agents were not able to file their withholding tax statements electronically due to non-availability of CNIC/NTN of the taxpayers especially in cases of dividend payment, profit on debt, non-resident persons etc. Now, with the additional identification allowed by the FBR, the withholding agents would be able to timely file their statements and discharge their tax liability.

Due to additional identification measures, the taxpayers have been facilitated to ensure compliance. The withholding tax statements can be prepared and submitted in any of the following modes i.e. Online Data Entry, Excel Based File attachment and Mixture of Online and Excel based attachments. In case of online data entry, the checks are applied in live mode and associated messages are displayed accordingly.

However, for preparing data of withholding tax statements in Excel format, the data should be provided in accordance with the FBR’s instructions.

The data of withholding tax statements included taxpayer’s ID type; taxpayer’s NTN/FTN; taxpayer’s CNIC; passport number; taxpayer’s name; taxpayer’s address; payment nature; payment section code; payment date; payment amount; tax rate; tax amount; tax deducted; tax deposited; deposit date; CPR number; provision of law; exemption certificate number; certificate date and certificate authority, sources added.