Islamabad: In a landmark decision, the Federal Tax Ombudsman (FTO) has directed the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) to facilitate taxpayers in filing their declarations due under the Assets Declaration Ordinance 2019 (Tax Amnesty 2019) — a news source reported on August 1.
According to the details available, this decision pertains specifically to the thousands of people who had paid their dues under the amnesty scheme within the due date, but had been unable to submit the requisite declarations by July 3, 2019 — the deadline for submitting declarations — due to a failure in the FBR’s online system.
The ombudsman, while hearing a petition on the amnesty scheme, ruled that the failure of the system to load was a maladministration in terms of Section 2(3) (ii) of the Income Tax Ordinance. He directed the FBR to invoke Section 17 of the ordinance, update its system, facilitate the taxpayers, and to submit a report on the entire process within 45 days.
