services.filer.pk: your tax year, from bank statements

Most people who put off their tax return are not avoiding tax. They are avoiding a year of bank statements. The return itself is a form; the hard part is turning twelve months of transactions into the handful of figures that go on it, and doing it in a way that still holds up if anyone asks.

That is the job services.filer.pk was built for. It is the working half of filer.pk: this site explains the rules, and services.filer.pk is where you apply them to your own money. This post explains what it does, what it does not do yet, and how it fits with a tax lawyer if you would rather not file alone.

What problem it solves

A calculator answers one question: “how much tax is due on this salary?” A return needs more than that. It needs your income split by type, your withholding tax gathered up so you can claim it, your personal expenses totalled, and your wealth statement reconciled — the money you started the year with, plus what came in, minus what went out, has to equal what you ended the year with.

All of that is sitting in your bank statements, mixed together, one line at a time. Sorting it by hand is where most people give up, or where they guess — and a guess on a wealth statement is exactly the kind of thing that turns into a notice later.

How it works, step by step

1. Import your statements

Upload the statements your bank already gives you. They are read, every transaction is given a proposed category, and the import is checked before anything is written. Formats from the major Pakistani banks are supported, and support is widening as real statements come in.

2. The balance chain has to hold

Every statement’s closing balance must equal the next statement’s opening balance. When every link in that chain holds, nothing was dropped and nothing was counted twice. If the chain breaks — a missing month, a duplicated page — the app tells you, rather than the tax office telling you later.

3. Answer only what it would not guess

The engine proposes a category for every row and leaves the genuinely ambiguous ones to you, instead of quietly deciding. A transfer to your own savings account is not an expense; a credit card bill payment is not a purchase; money you moved into foreign currency is still yours. Those are the places a hand-made spreadsheet usually goes wrong, and they are the questions the app asks.

4. Reconcile to zero, then export

The year closes to zero and produces a worksheet laid out against the fields of the FBR’s IRIS return, so the numbers you type into the portal come from something you can trace back to a bank line.

Each tax year is kept separate

A tax year is a sealed container. Nothing crosses between years, because the FBR revises the return forms nearly every year and a category that meant one field last year can mean a different one this year. Working a year at a time also means an old year stays exactly as you filed it.

Doing it yourself, or handing it to a tax lawyer

services.filer.pk offers two routes through the same ledger.

• Self-prepare. You do the work and keep control. This route is open today.
• Work with a tax lawyer. Get the year into a good state, then bring in a professional. You both look at the same ledger, documents are shared one at a time, and their access ends when the engagement does.

The lawyer directory is live and searchable by city and by service. Its first listing is The Business Consultants of Satellite Town, Rawalpindi — the practice filer.pk has referred readers to for help with their returns. Listings show a badge for whether a practice’s credentials have been verified, and new practices appear as they join, so check the badge before you engage anyone.

What it costs and what it keeps

It is free to start. Your statements and the ledger built from them belong to your account and are not shared with anyone unless you share them — including with a lawyer, who only sees what you hand over for the engagement. Identity numbers are encrypted when they are stored. The public calculators on services.filer.pk run entirely in your own browser and send nothing anywhere.

Statement reading is still marked beta for some banks. If a statement does not import cleanly, the app says so rather than guessing — and that is the report that helps support for your bank get better.

Common questions

Does services.filer.pk file my return with the FBR?

No. You, or a tax lawyer acting for you, still submit the return on the FBR’s IRIS portal. services.filer.pk prepares the figures and shows where each one came from.

Do I need to be a filer already to use it?

No. It is just as useful for a first return. If you are not registered yet, start with how to become a filer, and use the status check on the filer.pk home page to see whether you are on the current Active Taxpayers List.

Is it the same as filer.pk?

It is the same project. filer.pk is the free guide and the calculators; services.filer.pk is the workspace where you prepare your own year. Both are built by Offsetup.

I am a tax lawyer. Can I be listed?

Yes. Practices create a lawyer account, fill in a public profile and can submit their credentials for verification. See our services for what the listing offers, or email info@filer.pk.