Islamabad Chamber of Commerce & Industry (ICCI) has demanded that keeping in view the current crisis-like situation across the country, government should extend the date for filing of income tax returns for at least one month, which will facilitate businessmen and other taxpayers in preparing and filing their tax returns.

Chairing a meeting, Mr.Zahid Maqbool, President, ICCI said that Federal Board of Revenue has developed a new form of income tax returns, which is very complicated & cumbersome as lot of additional information has been sought in the new form. Therefore, taxpayers will be needed sufficient time for collecting and reporting the required information.

He said that FBR has already issued the draft of the new income tax form for comments which would be notified by August 25, 2010. After its notification, taxpayers would have hardly one week time to fill it as they will be required to file their tax returns by August 31, 2010.

However, he said that in view of the detailed information sought in new tax form, taxpayers will be facing lot of problems in completing & filing it by August 31, 2010. Therefore, taxpayers should be given sufficient time to collect all the relevant information. For this purpose, the target date should be extended by at least one month, he stressed.

Businessmen also showed strong exceptions to the incorporation of a new Annex-D in the new income tax return form for the individuals including partners of firms, individual businessmen and salaried individuals, as this annexure seeks too much detail of personal expenditures.
 
They said asking businessmen to provide information of personal expenditures including electricity & gas consumption, telephone, mobile & internet bills, house rent, education of children/spouse/self, local/foreign traveling, membership of clubs, fuel of motor vehicles, repair/maintenance of vehicle/house, personal driver/servants, etc. is like putting them through an unnecessary cumbersome process.

They said it is also tantamount to penetrating too deep into private life of taxpayers.Therefore, they called upon the government to review the new income tax form for making it more simple and easily understandable for taxpayers.