ISLAMABAD: The Federal Board of Revenue has asked over one million late filers of tax returns to pay penalty or higher tax for automatic closure of audit proceedings.

The late filers of returns for tax years 2015, 2016 and 2017 were selected for audit under Section 214D of the Income Tax Ordinance. The facility for availing automatic closure of audit under Section 214E is available till Dec 31 and approximately 1,022,000 taxpayers will benefit from it.

Moreover, Section 214D under which late filers were automatically selected for audit has been deleted from the Income Tax Ordinance 2001 in the Finance Act 2018 due to undue hardship faced by new taxpayers and to facilitate the process of broadening of tax base.

FBR Member Taxpayers’ Audit Nausheen Javaid Amjad announced in a statement that those taxpayers who were automatically selected for audit under Section 214D due to late filing of returns should now avail the facility by paying penalty or higher tax than previously filed return — whichever is applicable under the law.

She explained that salaried persons or those whose income fell under the category of FTR/PTR had to pay penalty only to close their audits.

However, the taxpayers whose income falls under any other head of income have to apply for revision of returns under Section 214E in Iris system.

Ms Amjad said a tab had been made available in the system for this task.

The relevant commissioner in regional tax offices will approve the said request within three days or the system will automatically allow revision on the fourth day.

The system will automatically calculate the tax due in both categories. Once the payment is made and relevant CPR attached and submitted, the system will automatically close the audit proceedings, she said.

Published in Dawn, November 15th, 2018