Knitwear industry shows resentment over delay in tax refund.

Lahore -- The value-added knitwear industry has expressed its disappointment over the performance of the Federal Board of Revenue's newly-launched Fully Automated Sales Tax e-Refund (FASTER) System, calling for a new and foolproof system for full and speedy payment of refunds.

While speaking a meeting ,here on Friday Vice Chairman of Pakistan Hosiery Manufacturers and Exporters Association(PHMA)Shafiq Butt said that it was the commitment of the FBR to release exporters' refunds within 72 hours has not been fulfilled completely.

He criticised the Federal Board of Revenue for not issuing billions of rupees refunds to exporters despite promises, urging Prime Minister Imran Khan for his directives to the tax agency to remove bottlenecks from the new refund payment system of the FBR. He asked the PM to also get his directives implemented on immediate basis and in their true spirit, as the exporters are facing a severe liquidity crunch due to delay in payment of sales tax refunds despite launch of new system by the FBR.

Butt said that the FBR had claimed that it would pay sales tax refunds through the newly installed Fully Automated Sales Tax e-Refund (FASTER) system to exporters of five sectors within 72 hours of submission of claims. However, at the initial stage exporters faced lots of hardship in filing their sales tax returns for getting refund, as the FASTER system never works because 'annexure H' of the system carried many flaws. He further said that all these issues were shared with the relevant FBR authorities.

PHMA vice chairman demanded a mechanism to find out the reasons of deferring up to 25 percent payment of exporters refunds under FASTER. The Automated Refund System should point out the reason as to why it is not making full payment and deferring 10 to 25 percent payment of the exporters while their documents are complete, he added.

He said that FBR has made partial payments against the sales tax refund claims...