Islamabad
The Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) has upgraded its FASTER system to FASTER Plus for expeditious and transparent Issuance of refunds to exporters.
The system would allow refunds to thousands of claimants whose refunds were stuck up due to any reason, said FBR in a statemen issued here Saturday.
Due to FASTER Plus System, Sales Tax refund claims of exporters, which were stuck up at pre-processing stage in the FASTER system due to any reason including erroneous filing, stand rolled back to claimants to provide an opportunity to exporters to review and resubmit their claims after removing shortcomings, the statement added.
It added that the automation process of refund of Sales Tax had started in 2002 through introduction of STARR system, which was semi-automated and refund claimants would file refund claims through Refund Claims Preparatory System (RCPS). Refund data was taken to field offices on CDs where the refund claims were sanctioned at field level.
In the year 2011, ERS was introduced for processing of refund claims of manufacturers-cum-exporters who could file their refund claims online whereas STARR system continued for processing of refund claims for other sectors.
In the aftermath of the rollback of zero rating, FASTER was introduced with effect from July, 2019 for processing of refund claims of ex-zero rated exporters at a fast pace of 72 hours.
Since the system was newly made, many system glitches marred proper working of FASTER system the statement said adding that from its beginning, due to these technical glitches in the FASTER system, refund claimants faced problems like many of the cases stuck up at pre-processing stage, missing amount of refunds, no intimation about the status of refund and delays in processing and sanctioning of refunds. —APP
