KARACHI (January 23 2010): In order to speed up tax refund process, the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) has decided to credit tax refund amount up to Rs 50,000 directly to the taxpayers' bank accounts without electronic refund claims.
Sources told reporters on Friday that the decision was taken at a meeting convened by FBR Chairman Sohail Ahmad at Regional Tax Office (RTO), Karachi, recently.
They said the board has already issued some 33,000 refund cheques upto Rs 50,000 directly to the accounts of the taxpayers and now the exercise is going to be extended to facilitate registered persons at maximum. They said the FBR chief has agreed to amend the policy of filing refund applications, which was mandatory for tax refunds, to accommodate the refunds upto Rs 50,000.
This was suggested by the representatives of Income Tax Bar Association (ITBA) at a meeting, to accelerate the process of issuing refund cheques upto Rs 50,000 directly to the taxpayers, they added. The sources said the refund amount will now be credited in respect of those taxpayers whose bank accounts were in those banks, which were on the panel of FBR, whereas rest of the taxpayers will receive refund vouchers through courier, mentioning their bank account numbers.
They said the board has also directed all tax offices to obtain minimum required documents for monitoring of taxpayers, as maximum data is available on e-port of the FBR. Moreover, they said the provisions regarding the revival of time-barred were available in the law but it was not properly being exercised, hence sales tax refunds got time-barred mostly because of switching of old system of taxation to composite IR system and urged the authorities concerned to take a similar decision to overcome the problem. They informed that RTO Karachi has already set up special counters to receive sales tax and federal excise refund claims of all registered persons for prompt processing.
