It said that most of the companies generally closed their accounts on June 30 each year and were accordingly required to file returns by December 31 each year and added that these companies were unable to file their returns by December 31, 2017.
The letter said that corporate tax return for the tax year 2017 was finalized and uploaded on the web portal 'IRIS System' through SRO 982(1)/2017 and added that the provisions of section 118 of the Income Tax Ordinance, 2001 provided that for e-filing of corporate tax return for the taxpayers whose accounting year ending any time between the first day of January and the thirtieth day of June was December 31, thus under the statute the companies were entitled for six months time from the date of publication of return of income ie March 27, 2018.
Moreover it said that tax consultants were busy in finalizing the tax returns till December 15, 2017 as such it was not humanly possible to prepare and file companies' returns of income on or before December 31, 2017 and most of cases the filing of return of non corporate returns was yet to be completed, which was evident from the number of returns filed so far and added that they were struggling very hard to clear the backlog of non corporate returns.
Keeping this in view, the PTBA has requested to extend the date for filing of corporate tax returns, due to be filed on or before December 31, 2017, up to March 27, 2018 to facilitate the corporate taxpayers at maximum.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2017