The Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) has received a total of 810,031 income tax returns for tax year 2016 as compared to 615,416 filed during tax year 2015, reflecting an increase of 32 percent. Sources told Business Recorder here on Thursday that the number of income tax returns would further increase after feeding data of 60,000 more manually filed returns. So far, 69,354 returns have been manually filed in tax year 2016 as compared to 104,918 for tax year 2015. Another 60,000 would be fed in the FBR's system, which would increase the number of return filers.

The data of return filing is encouraging because there is an increase of 32 per cent during the period under review. Breakup of data revealed that within the category of individuals, the FBR has received 764,887 returns for tax year 2016 as compared to 581,172 in tax year 2015. This category of individuals including salaried class has shown positive response in filing of annual income tax return/statement.

Under the category of Association of Persons (AOPs), a total of 37,760 returns have been filed for tax year 2016 against 29,156 returns for tax year 2015. So far, a total of 7,384 companies have filed returns for TY-2016 as compared to 5,088 during tax year 2015.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2016