THE Federal Board of Revenue (FBR)’s data for my Iris window — FBR’s portal that is used to submit tax returns — has missing entries for over 80 per cent of my investment in term deposits (TDRs) in a private bank in Islamabad.

These missing entries for my withholding tax (WHT) go back to all the way to May 2018 onwards, if not even earlier. This year, FBR has for the first time made data related to WHT deductions by banks and other regulatory authorities available to individual taxpayers on their Iris accounts. However, when I cross-checked the entries for all WHT deductions by a private bank for my investment in TDRs since May 2018, if not earlier, all those entries were found missing from FBR data on my Iris account.

I do not know whether it is FBR’s fault or the private bank’s. On Sept 19 and 20, I had written over 900 words in a correspondence that I sent via email both to the FBR and the bank concerned along with 13 attachments, most of them being bank statements and tax certificates attesting to all WHT deductions against my investment.

To the FBR, I had sent this complaint using their helpline via email on Sept 19, which advised me to get in touch with the secretary of Internal Revenue (IR) operations. I forwarded my complaint to the secretary on Sept 20 with all the write-ups and attachments, and also followed it up on the phone. The secretary of IR operations forwarded my complaint to member of Income Tax (IT), FBR, on Sept 20, who on Sept 24 forwarded it to GMSD PRAL, which is the relevant IT department dealing with Iris.

I am glad to see the government machinery entertaining a request by a concerned citizen and forwarding my complaint to the department concerned along the chain. I also shared the same complaint with the bank in question, sending it all the detailed write-ups with some additions and 13 attachments on Sept 19, requesting the bank and my relationship manager at the bank to share CPRs (challan numbers) of the WHT that the bank has been deducting against my investment for the last some years and supposedly paying to the FBR.

If the bank had provided me all the CPR numbers, it would have been much easier to trace the missing WHT entries and get them rectified on the FBR portal, according to my tax consultant. My bank’s only email response on Sept 20 to my complaint was a non-serious one. My relationship manager at the bank verbally told me on the phone afterwards that the bank could not provide me CPR numbers for WHT deductions against my investment.

However, when I told my relationship manager at the private bank to email the response to me, she did not do that despite several reminders.

Since then, I have not heard back from the bank on this matter. I am keeping my fingers crossed that either the FBR or the bank may get successful in tracing the missing entries of WHT on Iris and rectify this data for WHT entries accordingly.

Foqia Sadiq Khan
Islamabad

Published in Dawn, October 20th, 2022