ISLAMABAD: Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) Chairman Javed Ghani has constituted a committee for timely designing, finalisation and simplification of income tax return forms for individuals, association of persons and companies for the tax year 2021.

The decision to simplify the income tax return came six months before the filing of the tax return. Normally, the changes in the return form start in the month of August, which is the first month of filing of returns.

An official statement issued here said that the decision was taken as a part of various reform initiatives.

While departing from the previous practice, the FBR aims at designing the return forms in much advance so that forms are available to the taxpayers on the very first day of the tax year.

The committee will be chaired by Member (IR-Policy) whereas chief information officer, Chiefs of Inland Revenue Operations & Inland Revenue Policy and Second Secretary, Domain Business Team (DBT) of FBR’s Information Technology Wing would be members of the committee.

The committee aims at simplifying the income tax return forms to the best possible extent besides developing the return forms that require the least possible interventions on year to year basis. International best practices will be a guiding principle for the committee. The idea behind this endeavour is to facilitate the taxpayers’ and make the income tax return form more user-friendly and free from unnecessary complications.

In order to make this initiative more fruit-bearing and result-oriented, FBR through a separate communication has requested the ICAP, ICMAP, Pakistan Tax Bar Associations, and various chambers of commerce and industry to give their input for designing a simplified version of the return forms.

Published in Dawn, January 9th, 2021