Islamabad Chamber of Commerce & Industry (ICCI) has called upon the government to make necessary amendments in tax laws in the forthcoming budget for simplifying returns filing process to facilitate the taxpayers.

Businessmen in a meeting at ICCI said that one good option for the government to simplify this process is to assign different return filing dates to each category of taxpayers including salaried individuals, proprietors, Association of Persons and companies.

Chairing the meeting, Karim Aziz Malik & Ahsan Zafar Bakhtawari, Vice Presidents of ICCI said that according to the prevailing return filing method, majority of the taxpayers have to file their income tax returns in the month of September every year due to which system of FBR usually gets chocked creating problems for taxpayers.

They said that assigning different dates to each category of taxpayer will reduce burden on FBR system and will also facilitate return filers to file their returns with convenience.

Karim Aziz Malik said that the current return form is also quite complicated, particularly for less educated taxpayers. He suggested that FBR should take input from Chambers and other stakeholders for bringing further improvements in the return form to make it more simple and easily understandable for every taxpayer.

Ahsan Zafar Bakhtawari said that similar arrangements should be made for filing monthly withholding statements and sales tax returns on different dates to reduce pressure on FBR system and to make this exercise more easy for taxpayers.

Businessmen said that many of them have to hire the services of lawyers or consultants on high fee to prepare tax returns forms as they cannot do this job independently. This puts extra financial burden, particularly on small traders.

They suggested that instead of hiring lawyers/consultants, FBR should send its tax officials to the taxpayers who assist them in filing of returns without charging any fee. They were of the view that this practice, if implemented, will go a long way in improving tax revenue for the government.