Date for manual tax filing extended till Nov 30 in Pakistan

Pakistan has extended the deadline for filing manual tax returns until November 30 to facilitate taxpayers using the now-discontinued system.

A Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) notification said it had stopped accepting manual tax filing this year as part of the efforts to digitize the data.

However, “a small fraction of people” who were still filing manual returns till 2024 were now facing some issues, the revenue bodies said without giving any details about the problems.

The notification added that FBR has set up a cell in every tax office across the country to “provide all legal and technical support” to taxpayers filing manual returns.

Manual tax filers also have till November 30 to submit their returns.

The FBR directed taxpayers to contact their respective tax offices for assistance with registration and return filing free of cost. “Even if they require legal assistance, the FBR field office will provide them service of a lawyer free of any cost this.”

Earlier this week, FBR granted a third 15-day extension for taxpayers who missed the income tax filing deadline, allowing them to apply online until November 15, along with valid reasons for the delay.

The FBR has previously extended the filing deadline twice—first from Sept. 30 to Oct. 15, and then to Oct. 31—after technical glitches in the online system and a last-minute surge in portal traffic left thousands unable to submit returns on time.

Official data shows that 6.24 million individuals and entities have filed income tax returns so far this year, a sharp decline of more than 2.26 million from the previous year.

The Active Taxpayers List (ATL), published on November 1, has raised alarm among economists and policy experts. Last year’s ATL recorded around 8.5 million active taxpayers, a drop analysts describe as “a worrying contraction” in the country’s documented tax base.

Separately, the FBR reported that it fell short of its collection target by PKR 274 billion during the first four months of the 2025–26 fiscal year, mainly due to weaker domestic sales tax receipts.