The Federal Board of Revenue has announced that its online tax return filing portal, IRIS, along with several other digital tax services, will remain temporarily unavailable over the weekend due to scheduled system maintenance. In a public notice issued on Friday, the revenue authority said the maintenance work would commence at 12:30 a.m. on Saturday, August 8, 2026, and continue until 5:00 a.m. on Monday, August 10, 2026, during which time a range of digital platforms used by taxpayers across the country would be taken offline.
During the maintenance window, taxpayers and other stakeholders will be unable to access several important online platforms, including the IRIS tax return filing portal, Digital Invoicing, the Payment System, the Synchronized Withholding Administration and Payment System, and the Point of Sale Registration platform. The Federal Board of Revenue said all transactions linked to these services, including tax return filing, tax payments, registrations and other online activities, would remain unavailable throughout the scheduled period, effectively pausing most digital interactions between taxpayers and the tax authority until the work is completed.
The tax authority has urged taxpayers, businesses and tax practitioners to complete any time sensitive tax related activities before the maintenance begins, advising users to finalise income tax return filings, tax payments, registrations and other online transactions in advance. Officials said that planning ahead would help taxpayers avoid inconvenience during the temporary suspension of services, particularly for those with deadlines falling within or close to the maintenance window. The advisory reflects the broad reliance that individual taxpayers, companies and tax consultants across Pakistan now place on the IRIS system for routine compliance activities, meaning any extended downtime has the potential to disrupt standard filing and payment schedules if not planned for properly.
According to the Federal Board of Revenue, all affected digital platforms are expected to become operational immediately after the successful completion of the maintenance work, allowing services to resume without requiring further action from users once the system is restored. The revenue authority expressed regret over the temporary disruption and thanked taxpayers and stakeholders for their patience and cooperation during the process. The IRIS portal serves as the primary online platform for income tax return filing, sales tax registration, tax payments and a wide range of other digital tax services, and is used extensively by individual taxpayers, companies, tax consultants and other stakeholders throughout the country, making it one of the more heavily used pieces of digital infrastructure within Pakistan’s public sector.
The scheduled maintenance is aimed at ensuring the continued reliability, performance and security of the Federal Board of Revenue’s digital tax infrastructure, which has increasingly become central to how the country manages tax compliance and collection. Periodic maintenance of this kind is typically intended to address underlying technical issues and reinforce system stability, reducing the likelihood of unplanned outages during peak filing periods. With services expected to resume shortly after the maintenance window closes, taxpayers who were unable to complete transactions over the weekend will be able to do so once the platforms are back online.
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