LAHORE: The Lahore High Court has held that merely uploading an appellate order to the Federal Board of Revenue’s (FBR) Inland Revenue Information System (IRIS) does not constitute valid service under the Income Tax Ordinance, 2001.
An LHC division bench comprising Justice Mirza Viqas Rauf and Justice Anwaar Hussain decided three connected reference applications led by Tahir Mehmood.
The applications challenged three orders of the Appellate Tribunal Inland Revenue, which had dismissed the taxpayers’ appeals as time-barred on the ground that uploading the orders to IRIS constituted sufficient service.
In one case, the taxpayer argued that Covid-19 and quarantine following a foreign trip had prevented him from accessing the portal. In the other two cases, the taxpayers said they learned of the Commissioner (Appeals)’ orders only after receiving recovery notices in April 2026, months after the orders had been passed.
Justice Anwaar Hussain, who authored the judgement, held that Section 218(1)(d) of the ordinance recognises electronic service only when carried out in the prescribed manner.
He observed that Rule 74 of the Income Tax Rules limits an electronic address to a fax number or an email address and requires confirmation of transmission.
IRIS, by contrast, is an internal, web-based workflow system for tax administration, the judge noted, adding that placing an order in a taxpayer’s account does not establish its transmission to an electronic address as required under the rule.
The judge distinguished between accessibility and service, observing that an order may be accessible without having been served in accordance with the law.
He further held that the limitation period could not begin from an event that the law did not recognise as its starting point.
Rejecting the department’s argument that Rule 74 could not restrict the parent provision, the judge said the requirement of service in the “prescribed manner” was part of the ordinance itself.
The judge also dismissed the contention that taxpayers were required to routinely monitor IRIS.
The judge said the department could not dismiss the pandemic-related explanation, as the correctness of the tribunal’s conclusion involved a question of law that the high court was competent to examine.
Observing that technology was an instrument of statutory administration rather than an independent source of statutory authority, the judge said modernisation could not dispense with legal safeguards.
The court referred to rulings of the Peshawar and Islamabad high courts and the Delhi High Court, as well as Articles 4 and 10A of the Constitution.
The bench set aside the impugned orders and directed the tribunal to decide the appeals afresh on merit.
Published in Dawn, October 30th, 2026
Source: www.dawn.com
