KTBA suggests steps to facilitate exporters

KARACHI: Tax practitioners on Monday submitted proposals to facilitate exporters in online filing of returns and settlement of pending refunds.

In a letter sent to Shabbar Zaidi, the chairman of Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) on Monday, the Karachi Tax Bar Association (KTBA) highlighted issues faced by exporters, especially pertaining to sales tax refunds.

The tax bar pointed out that the exporters were required to file Form-H for receiving real time sales tax refunds from July 1, 2019 onwards.

The KTBA said Annexure-H was only being allowed to be filed by taxpayers who have filed the said Annexure from sales tax returns of July 2019 and onwards.

Instead of claiming refund, some taxpayers have reported sales tax carried forward balance in their sales tax returns from July 2019 onwards. In case they now intend to file Annexure H from the current month, FBR’s online portal does not allow such taxpayers to enter opening balance of inventory / raw materials as the said field in blocked for editing.

This limitation should be removed and taxpayers should be allowed to file Annexure-H for any specific month, for which they intend to claim refund.

From apparent mechanism being followed by the system, it appears that those taxpayers who have not filed Annexure-H for the month of July 2019 would never be allowed to file Annexure-H for any subsequent month.

The tax bar also pointed out bottleneck for exports due to adjustment of sales tax under Section 8B of Sales Tax Act, 1990.

The tax bar suggested that since exports do not contribute towards output tax; therefore, condition of 50 percent should be amended to 10 percent on monthly basis for all exports irrespective of any sector. Otherwise, it would not be possible for registered person to absorb the amount of input tax paid for the purposes of manufacturing of items for local and export sales and consequently, the same would discourage export of goods.