The decision was taken in a meeting of chief commissioners held at the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) headquarters here on Tuesday.
Only 155,000 enterprises submitted returns online by November 21 that were less than last year’s figure.
Last year, 166,000 returns were filed online. Corporate class, individual businesses and Associations of Persons are required to file online returns. Salaried class has the option to submit manual returns.
In a bid to increase tax collection, the FBR on Monday extended the date for filing returns up to November 30 for the fourth time.
FBR is struggling to broaden the tax base as out of a population of around 180 million, only two million are active taxpayers. It has also launched a campaign to bring 700,000 wealthy people into the tax net, but so far desired results could not be achieved.
Tax officials claim that they have so far issued notices to 300,000 people, asking them to file their returns.
FBR Chairman Salman Siddique said the number of income tax return filers would go up in coming days and dispelled the impression that extensions had been given due to lukewarm response.
Elaborating, Siddique said initially the extension was given after the electronic filing system encountered problems and the last extension was granted on the calls of business community.
An FBR official told The Express Tribune that the board remained committed to the Rs1,952 billion tax target, though the International Monetary Fund (IMF) believed that revenue collection would be Rs1,938 billion at best.
IMF assumed that imports would start declining in coming months, leading to less sales tax collection, the official said. However, the government argued that massive urea imports in coming months would help generate additional sales tax.
The official added IMF also doubted that FBR would be able to collect Rs50 billion through administrative measures, including plugging of revenue leakages and recovery of arrears, to achieve the target.
Tax officials pointed out that a healthy growth in tax collection in first four months of the current financial year indicated that the full-year target would be achieved. From July through October, tax collection stood at Rs509 billion, higher by 27 per cent from last year.
In the conference, FBR decided to clear 9,000 tax refund claims of up to Rs100,000 by December-end and another 10,000 by the end of January that would remove almost half of the backlog.
Recently, taxmen had assured the Senate standing committee on finance that refund payments involving small amounts would be accelerated.
FBR also decided to stop issuing manual exemption certificates for withholding tax in order to stave off misuse of the facility. Now, it will issue only online exemption certificates to service providers and suppliers, said the tax official.
Published in The Express Tribune, November 23rd, 2011.
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