Filer.pk is a free guide to tax in Pakistan, written for people who have to deal with it rather than for people who do it for a living.
Most Pakistanis who are not filers are not avoiding anything. They simply do not know what the Active Taxpayers List is, what being off it costs them, or where the process starts. That gap is what this site exists to close.
What is here
- Guides that walk through the things people actually get stuck on — what a filer is, how to become one, the wealth statement, filing a nil return, what happens after you file.
- Four calculators — income tax, what non-filer status costs, late filing penalties and sales tax. Free, no sign-up, nothing stored.
- News when something actually changes — a deadline, a Finance Act, an FBR notification.
- Answers to the questions we are asked most often.
How we work
Three habits, and they are the reason to trust the numbers here over a summary somewhere else.
Rates come from the FBR, not from commentary. Our withholding figures are built from the FBR’s own rate card rather than from articles about it — which matters, because consultancy sites frequently disagree with each other on the same rate. Each calculator shows the rate table it used and the date those rates were last checked.
Articles are computed, not typed. When a guide quotes a tax figure, it is generally produced by the same engine that powers the calculator on this site. So the article and the tool cannot drift apart and quietly start disagreeing.
Everything carries a date. Tax rules change mid-year. A page that does not say when it was last checked is asking you to take it on faith.
What this site is not
- It does not file your return. Filing happens on the FBR’s IRIS portal. We explain it; we are not a substitute for it.
- It is not advice on your own situation. The guides are general. Where a decision turns on your particular circumstances, talk to a registered tax practitioner. We can explain how a rule works and point you at it; we cannot advise you on your own position, and we say where that line falls.
- It is not the law. Where a page and the Income Tax Ordinance disagree, the Ordinance wins. We tell you which section to look at so you can check.
Who builds it
Filer.pk is built by Offsetup, which builds software for Pakistani businesses. What we offer here is set out separately. Its other systems are InternalPayroll, which runs payroll and office administration for companies, and BuildingSetup, which manages residential and commercial buildings.
That is not incidental to this site. The tax logic behind our income tax calculator came out of the payroll engine, where it had to be right every month for real salaries — which is a more demanding test than a web calculator usually gets.
We are also building services.filer.pk, a workspace that takes your bank statements, categorises the year, reconciles it to zero and produces the worksheet you file from — either on your own, or handed to a verified tax lawyer.
Get in touch
Corrections are genuinely welcome. If something here is wrong or out of date, tell us and we will fix it and say when. Email reaches us at info@filer.pk.
Why this site is free, and how it is paid for
Everything here is free to use and there is no sign-up. The calculators run entirely in your browser — the rates are delivered with the page and nothing you type is sent anywhere, stored, or seen by us.
The site carries advertising on its article and calculator pages, and not on its listing pages. It is also the front door to the software Offsetup builds, which is the more honest answer to how it is funded. We would rather say that than pretend a free tax site appears from nowhere.
What that does not buy is influence over the numbers. The rates come from the FBR’s own published cards and the Finance Acts, they carry the date they were last checked, and where sources disagree we say so on the page instead of quietly picking one — the minimum late filing penalty and the provincial sales tax rates both carry that warning in place today.
Getting it wrong, and fixing it
Tax rates in Pakistan change with almost every Finance Act, provincial service rates change on their own timetable, and some of what circulates online is years out of date. We are not exempt from that. Pages here have carried figures that were correct when written and were not a year later.
The defence against it is the verification date on every set of figures and a willingness to be corrected. If you find a rate, threshold or deadline that has moved, tell us — with the source if you have it — and we will fix it and record when. Corrections are the most useful messages we get.