IHAD applied for voluntary sales tax reg-istration on the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) website on Aug 19, and later sub-mitted a manual application on Aug 23. Based upon that, I received an official letter on Aug 28, and was asked to report to the FBR office. Unfortunately, after paying five visits to different offices since then, I still do not know which FBR office has jurisdiction over my case because every office has simply referred me to some other office. Left with no option, I put my case on the Citizen Portal on Sept 30 (SD300924-91517544), which is still lying unattended.

This just reminds me of a press confe-rence that the federal finance minister had addressed a few months ago in which he had asserted that actions should speak louder than words. In my interaction with FBR, I have only experienced words with-out any action.

The relevant authorities should resolve the issue as it is really causing uncertainty at my end. At this stage, I am just not interested whether my application gets accepted or rejected. All I am interested in is the ultimate fate of the application so that I may prioritise my work accordingly.

Altaf Ahmed Nizamani
Karachi

Published in Dawn, November 2nd, 2024