Sales Tax General Order (STGO) 7 of 2023 was released by the FBR on Friday. The FBR informed merchants that their input tax claims will be denied without additional notice or legal action.
“Their input tax claim would be refused as above, without any additional notice or proceedings, with the filing of Sales Tax Return for the month of January 2023 for all herein informed T-lRs not having yet integrated, creating tax demand by the same amount,” FBR asserted.
According to the FBR’s STGO, the aforementioned large retailers must be integrated with the Board’s POS system. The list of 124 recognised stores showed that the major merchants aren’t registered with the sales tax office for POS purposes and aren’t depositing sales tax from customers into the national exchequer either.
The FBR published a list of 81 large shops (Tier-1) last month. These merchants must be integrated with the FBR’s POS system in order to receive a 60 percent input tax credit; otherwise, they will not. As of this writing, 124 large retailers (Tier-1) were required to be connected with the POS system.
The board has determined that these large retailers (Tier-1) will face increased sales tax demands if they do not connect with the FBR’s POS system by the deadline of February 10, 2023. In accordance with the sub-section (6) that the Finance Act of 2019 added to section 8B of the Sales Tax Act of 1990 (“the STA, 1990”), a Tier-l Retailer (“(T-1R)”) who did not integrate its retail outlet in the manner specified under sub-section (9A) of section 3 of the STA, 1990 during a tax period would have a 15 percent reduction in its adjustable tax for that period.
According to the Finance Act of 2021, the 15 percent figure has been increased to 60 percent. With effect from July 2021 (Sales Tax Returns filed in August 2021), all Tiers that are required to integrate but have not yet integrated are to be handled in accordance with the procedure outlined in STGO No I of 2022 issued on August 3, 2021, in order to operationalize this significant legal provision.
According to STGO 17 of 2022, dated May 13, 2022, the process for excluding a Tier-I entity from this list of identified Tier-I entities shall be followed, the FBR noted.
