Islamabad: The Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) is all set to launch an automated system for providing tax exemption certificates to raw material importers, according to sources. The board wishes to rid the process of any unnecessary delays and minimise the need for human interactions.
On Wednesday, the board discussed the matter and requested proposals from all the stakeholders concerned – so as to attain a number of viewpoints before unveiling the new system.
This system will cater to both public and private sector companies, as well as to the needs of individual importers. It will work using an automated risk-based mechanism to decrease the processing time needed to generate these certificates.
In order to qualify for a certificate, importers would need to upload a geo-tagged picture of the manufacturing facility and a legal undertaking into the system. Additionally, the application for gaining tax exemptions would need to be filled out on IRIS, the FBR’s online taxpayer registration system.
Furthermore, the exact quantity of the raw materials required would need to be specified in units. To qualify for a tax exemption, the amount of raw materials cannot exceed 125% of the amount imported during the previous tax year.
These certificates will be granted following the approval of the commissioner, but if he (or she) fails to do so in the stipulated timeframe, the system will automatically grant the exemption certificate. Certificates granted automatically can be revoked by the commissioner at any time if the applicant fails to meet the required conditions (after having being given the chance to state his/her case).
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