Circular No.03 of 2020, Islamabad, 7th December, 2020

Standard Procedure for Sanctioning of Missing Amounts Stuck in FASTER System due to System Glitches Government of Pakistan Revenue Division Federal Board of Revenue Inland Revenue ***** C.No. 1(3)ST/P R/Circular/2020/223265-R Islamabad, 7th December, 2020 Circular No.03 of 2020 - Operations (Sales Tax) Subject: Standard Procedure for Sanctioning of Missing Amounts Stuck in FASTER System due to System Glitches In the wake of rollback of zero-rating extended vide SRO 1125 of 2011 issued under sections 3(2)(b) (6); 4(c); 8(1)(b); and 71 of the Sales Tax Act, 1990, with effect from January 1, 2012, a Fully Automated Sales Tax e-Refund System (FASTER) was introduced to process and sanction exporters' refunds expeditiously. Although, FASTER was rolled out inside the very first quarter of T/Y 2020, yet it continued to malfunction on multiple counts producing suboptimal outcomes. One evidence of FASTER's malfunctioning was that the system would simply miss out on sales tax credits of various taxpayers stalling processing of their refund claims. This system glitch created problems for exporting taxpayers in terms of uncertainty and stuck-up liquidity, and for the tax administration in terms of credibility deficit. 2. The matter has been analyzed threadbare at the head office, and found out that the problem of missing amounts cropped up due to the very designing of the FASTER module plausibly on three counts, namely; (i) FASTER was programmed to pick the least of the three opening balances of carry forward of previous month from (a) Sales Tax Return; (b) Annex-H; and (c) the e-RPO generated; (ii) FASTER module's non-synchronization with STRIVE i.e. Serial 7a and 7b of the Sales Tax Return; and (iii) Misapplication of section 8B to certain exporters in FASTER module. 3. These design flaws resulted in wide-going anxiety amongst the exporters' community as large number of missing amounts claimed by them was not being reflected on their e-RPOs after processing by the…