The business community in a meeting at Islamabad Chamber of Commerce and Industry (ICCI) expressed concerns over the complicated e-filing system of tax returns and called upon the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) to simplify it and make it more user-friendly for taxpayers.
ICCI President Muzammil Hussain Sabri said that the business community supports the documented economy and wants to pay tax because no economy could develop without tax revenue.
“However, keeping in view the educational background and computer literacy of majority of business community and other taxpayers, the prevailing e-filing system needs to be further simplified as it requires considerable time and effort to provide all the required details at present,” said Sabri.
He said that the system is particularly difficult for small traders who are not computer literate and they have to hire the services of experts for preparing and e-filing of their tax returns due to which it imposes extra cost on them. He said the system is also not easily understandable to many taxpayers.
“Moreover, during rush hours, FBR Portal sometimes goes down due to which the taxpayers face problems in opening tax forms and submitting online tax returns,” said Sabri.
He stressed that the FBR look into these issues and remove the complications.
The ICCI president said that FBR should arrange more consultative processes and launch massive awareness campaigns to educate the maximum number of taxpayers about the system.
He said that FBR should also consider rolling-out the system step by step instead of implementing it in one go.
Sabri said that the current complicated e-filing system also hurdles broadening the tax net and proves costly for the tax department also because tax officials have to spend lot of time and effort in auditing the detailed tax returns.
“A simplified and user-friendly e-filing system would reduce costs significantly both for taxpayers and the tax department and would lead to expansion in tax base and tax revenue for the country,” opined Sabri.
He, therefore, said that the government should make utmost efforts to remove all unnecessary requirements from e-filing system and simplify it to promote the formal economy.