The Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) is facing mounting pressure as it struggles to meet its tax collection targets, with income tax return filings lagging far behind last year’s numbers and technical issues worsening the situation.
As of September 30, only 3.2 million income tax returns had been filed, less than half of the 7.7 million returns submitted for the previous tax year. The shortfall comes at a critical time, as the FBR races to achieve its ambitious first-quarter revenue target of Rs. 3.083 trillion.
The situation has been made worse by repeated technical disruptions. On Monday, the FBR’s IRIS portal, used nationwide for filing tax returns, remained inaccessible for most of the day. The outage left taxpayers and tax practitioners unable to submit returns for Tax Year 2025, sparking urgent calls from professional bodies and tax consultants for an extension of the filing deadline.
The Lahore Tax Bar Association (LTBA) raised the alarm in a letter to the Finance Minister, warning that the IRIS portal’s downtime could lead to widespread non-compliance through no fault of taxpayers. “Tax practitioners and taxpayers were unable to file income tax returns due to the outage,” the LTBA stated, urging authorities to address the issue and extend the deadline.
Meanwhile, the FBR has extended deadlines for tax-free sugar imports and for traders to implement real-time electronic sales tax reporting, further highlighting ongoing challenges in tax administration.
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has also pressed the FBR to show concrete progress on its transformation plan, which was approved last year by Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif with over Rs. 55 billion in funding. The plan aims to modernize tax administration and boost collections, but the FBR’s persistent struggles, both technical and operational, underscore the scale of the task ahead.
Where is the corporate tax ? Why just income tax ? Do companies have issue paying taxes now ?
Instead of fascilitating filers….they have to pay fine if return is submitted late….But Non filers r enjoying here…They know how to manage …PLZ DISCUSS IN DETAILS ESP WITH PUBLIC IN SUCH ISSUES…
Yep, FBR should focus on Non filers, catch them instead of already filers, mostly salaried class whose tax is cut at source and deposited , this is what i can syggest humbly
FBR is full of certified morons. They complicate I. T returns and name it a “Simplified” wizard based application. For instance l and my wife have a few joint bank accounts. Traditionally the income from these accounts was split half and half in mine and my wife’s returns. This year it has been lumped as one figure in my return and with no explanation as to how much comes from which bank account. And their figure is no even close to my calculation about my income from bank accounts. And their figure cannot be changed! Idiots!
FBR continuously made blunders by interrupted the policy,hence,the result facing shameful
This failour of fbr is due to spreading panic among tax payers regularly filing tax returns but faced unjustified notices issued by thd fbr in the 1st week of sept. 2025. Most of the notices are baseless and issued without detailed scruitiny of tax return 2024.
The salaried class and people who are in the tax net suffer year after year. The big fish who have not declared themselves as filers go scot free year after year. FBR needs to widen the tax net rather than strangle the few who are already in the tax net. Stop suffocating the middle class
ProPakistani can you also do a story on where the trillions of money was spent after collection of that much tax? I am a filer for last 2 tax years. I am curious.
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