Daily Times

Apress briefing was held at Federal Tax Ombudsman Secretariat Islamabad. Almas Ali Jovindah (Advisor Legal), Muhammad Majid Qureshi ( Registrar FTO),and Naseer Butt (Advisor Income Tax) briefed the media persons on latest important recommendations of the FTO.

On the recommendations of the Federal Tax Ombudsman (FTO), the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) is expected to make changes in the income tax return form or introduce a separate salary return form in simplified form called as ‘Green Channel Mode’ to facilitate 1.4 million salaried individuals/pensioners for Tax Year 2023.

Almas Jobindah said that an own motion investigation was initiated on hardships caused to salaried individuals and pensioners by complex tax return format while exercising powers conferred u/s 9 (1) of the Federal Tax Ombudsman Ordinance, 2000 (FTO Ordinance).

He said that analysis of data shows that the total number of fields visible on the return devised for the salaried/pensioner class comprise 34 entries whereas admittedly only 04 fields are relevant to the class of taxpayers earning income from salary/pension only meaning thereby that the balance 30 fields are in fact not relevant to such a class of income taxpayers. In terms of percentage, only 11.76% fields are – relevant to a person who earns only salary/pension income. All other non-relevant fields create a lot of complexity and hassle for individuals who are neither familiar with the tax laws and nor are they tech-savvy. there are 07 steps involved in this process. However, each step has various tabs ranging from 02 to 27 tabs and total tabs involved in these steps come to 66. This means that a salaried taxpayer having income source only from salarylpension has to scroll through as many as66 different tabs to reach closure of return filing exercise.

Naseer Butt explained that the statistical and descriptive analysis of data provided by FBR revealed that present format of tax return for salaried individuals is too complex for an ordinary individual to understand as the prescribed format contains many fields which are not relevant to a taxpayer whose only source of income is salary/pension.

Registrar FTO, Majid Qureshi said that the so called simplified form introduced through software ‘Wizard’ is also beyond comprehension of an ordinary individual who is neither familiar with tax terminology and nor is he computer literate. “Therefore, there is a dire need to devise a separate salary return in simplified form or provide a separate window in Iris to facilitate about 1.4 million taxpayers”, he added.