ISLAMABAD: The Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) received 161,379 sales tax returns in January through the National Sales Tax Return (NSTR) platform for December 2021 compared to 159,503 filed in the same month last year.

       An official announcement, however, said so far 114,405 returns for January had been filed through this platform.

       The NSTR system, launched last month, has enabled taxpaying businesses to file a single monthly sales tax return rather than filing multiple entries on multiple platforms.

       “No technical issue has so far been reported in the NSTR”, the FBR claims, advising all the remaining sales tax registered persons to file their returns before the deadline as there will be no further extension in the last date.

       Similarly, the taxpayers are also encouraged to file their refund applications faster, using this platform, without further delay.

       The NSTR was prepared to facilitate the taxpayers who had to file multiple returns and to the different provincial sales tax authorities.

       Building further on its ongoing drive to ensure ease of doing business, this innovative intervention is aimed at simplifying the filing process and minimising the data entry. It is also designed to rule out calculation errors by adding some inbuilt functionalities.

       After its launch in January, some taxpayers complained about difficulties in filing the new return. Most of these issues came up due to initial learning difficulties and understanding of the new system.

       For facilitating the smooth transition, steps have been included regular interaction with different tax bar associations to educate the tax practitioners, uploading of video tutorials and Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) on FBR’s website.

       Furthermore, a new “Com-plaint” tab in IRIS has also been added to allow taxpayers to directly register their complaints instead of resorting to the FBR helpline.

       Published in Dawn, February 25th, 2022