Customs agents facing hardships in filing goods declaration

KARACHI: The Karachi Customs Agents Association (KCAA) on Monday said that its members being service providers are facing difficulties in filing their goods declaration, as their national tax number (NTN) are blocked by the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) due to non-filing of returns in the e-portal despite the fact that they are compliant with the provincial revenue authority.
Nadeem Kamil, general secretary of the KCAA in a statement said that after the 18th Amendment , the provincial government was delegated with the power to collect sales tax and the service providers were supposed to pay and submit their sales tax with the provincial government, ie, the Sindh Revenue Board (SRB). “Therefore, the service providers assume that they are electronically shifted from FBR Sale Tax Act 1990 to Sindh Sales Tax on Services Act 2011 by using the e-portal of SRB,” he added.
In this connection, SRB will integrate with the e-portal of the FBR and the taxpayers input their data at the SRB portal, which should automatically be transmitted at the FBR e-portal as such there were no clarification issued from the Sales Tax Department for filing a nil return in the e-portal of the FBR.
Furthermore, the service provider paid sales tax to SRB and income tax returns at the Federal Board of Revenue ; therefore, sales tax registration is with the SRB then income tax (NTN) should remain active. The matter has been taken up by the association with the competent authorities of the FBR and SRB to resolve this issue with mutual understanding and to avoid issuance of show-cause notices and blocking national tax number due to which a panic situation and unrest is spreading among the members. Kamil said that the Customs agents are regularly paying their sales tax in SRB portal; therefore, the issuance of show-cause notices and blocking of NTN is unjustified and should be withdrawn.
He said that in case the service providers could not file nil returns in the FBR portal for a long period, but their NTN remain active in the FBR portal, whereas in case of non-filing of sales tax return under the SRB portal for a short period of one to three months the NTN became non-active at the FBR portal, which creates problems for the Customs agents (service providers) in filing goods declaration in WeBOC system.
He said, "In the light of the above stated situation, we request the FBR and SRB authorities to integrate both portal and the sales tax paid with SRB should be updated on the FBR automatically."
"In the meantime, we also request the authorities concerned that the notices issued to the service providers may also be withdrawn immediately and the national tax number should remain active in the system."