LAHORE: Punjab Revenue Authority (PRA) has directed hotels, restaurants, coffee shops and wedding halls covered by its electronic invoicing requirements to issue system-generated receipts, warning of penalties for non-compliance.
Businesses must connect their invoicing systems to the Electronic Invoice Monitoring System (EIMS) and provide customers with receipts generated through it.
PRA has warned that businesses which bypass the system or fail to comply could face fines ranging from Rs.400,000 to Rs.1 million.
The authority says electronic records will help it monitor sales, check tax payments and identify discrepancies between transactions and declared revenue.
Earlier enforcement instructions prohibited businesses from giving customers handwritten receipts, kitchen order slips or unpaid bills in place of proper tax receipts. Those instructions required receipts to display the business name, address, receipt number and PRA verification code.
Businesses cannot satisfy the requirement merely by recording a transaction internally; they must issue the prescribed receipt to the customer.
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PRA’s public EIMS portal provides an invoice-number search facility. It displays fields for the invoice date, transaction items, sale price, tax charge and total amount, alongside user guides and installation software.
However, the electronic-receipt requirement predates the latest report. Coverage in August described similar instructions for hospitality businesses, while more recent reporting has documented PRA’s push to expand system installations and business registration.
PRA maintains that digital monitoring will improve transparency and reduce opportunities to conceal taxable sales. Its enforcement warning concerns compliance with the invoicing system; it does not establish wrongdoing by every business in the affected sectors.
