In the upcoming budget for 2017-18, Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) is going to suggest legislation exempt mobile phone subscribers (who do not fall below the tax net) from the disbursement of withholding tax.
This was exposed by FBR officials while doing a conference with the Senate Standing Committee on Information Technology and Telecommunication which met with Taj Mohammad Afridi in the chair.
Once put into practice, telcos will let off a majority of Pakistanis from withholding taxes that they pay on each card re-load.
Moreover, subscribers will keep on paying GST or Sales Tax on service consumption.
Parliamentarians declared that it was a severe concern whereby billions of rupees are composed of the head of WHT from cellular subscribers, even those underprivileged people of Pakistan who do not fall under the category of the tax net and regrettably the FBR has still no means in place to treat the situation.
Committee members declared that “FBR has botched to grant the relief to a common man”.
The legislation is required to grant such kind of exemption to the regulars having earnings below the taxable boundary, said by FBR. Such kind of proposals will be nominated in the forthcoming budget.
In the last meeting, the committee had suggested FBR set up a mechanism for connectivity with the servers of the cell phone operatives for supervising of withholding taxes.
About the condition on the online withholding information distribution by telecom companies, FBR officials said that FBR/PRAL has urbanized the convenience which allows Telcos to upload withholding records file on settled layout on both FTP and HTTP-based Web examine.
FBR/PRAL has also finished the task of data reading and populating the relevant data repository at FRB’s end. FBR/PRAL has communicated to all Telcos the process of uploading withholding data files, they added.
On 13th February 2017 for the enforcement of above process, a meeting was held in LTU Islamabad and Telcos approved to upload their data and information. But all Telcos have not uploaded withholding tax data.
After the whole data is uploaded, great Taxpayers Unit will examine it and additional action, if any, would commence. The committee gave an ultimatum of three months to FBR for completing the agreement.
Via: Techjuice
