FBR develops Single Sales Tax Portal

ISLAMABAD: The Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) has developed a Single Sales Tax Portal for allowing taxpayers to file unified GST returns for goods and services. For harmonization of GST on goods and services, it is a big development achieved by the FBR in consultation with the provinces under the condition of the World Bank loan.

According to the FBR’s statement issued here on Thursday, building further on its ongoing drive for digitization and automation of various processes involved in revenue collection, the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) has developed Single Sales Tax Portal to facilitate the taxpayers and ensure the ease of doing business.

This watershed development of the Single Tax Portal developed by the FBR is the outcome of various rounds of negotiations between the FBR and the provincial revenue authorities. The FBR has already offered this portal to the provincial revenue authorities in order to facilitate the taxpayers through one-link facility. The portal is in the final stages of testing and is likely to be launched by the last week of October, 2021.

It is pertinent to mention that till now, sales tax registered persons had to file their monthly Sales Tax returns separately to every tax jurisdiction where they conducted business, such as FBR, Sindh Revenue Board, Punjab Revenue Authority, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Revenue Authority and Balochistan Revenue Authority.

Some of the taxpayers had to file returns with revenue authorities of Azad Jammu & Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan. This was a cumbersome task, which often led to complications and disputes over jurisdiction.

The Single Sales Tax Portal will also help in simplification of the tax procedures. It will enable the taxpayers to save time and effort, and reduce their compliance costs. By minimizing data entry, it also addresses the issues of data and calculation errors.

The system will automatically apportion input tax adjustment as well as tax payments across the sales tax authorities. Through this system, officers of all revenue authorities will be able to make better informed decisions about matters related to sales tax.

The single portal system is a significant milestone towards taxpayers’ facilitation and a big leap forward towards harmonization of taxes between the federal government and the provinces, the statement concluded.