The Senate Standing Committee on Information Technology and Telecommunication requested telecom companies to file a petition regarding tax exemption and rationalization of taxation regime, so that the committee can take up the issue to the parliament.
The committee convened under the chairmanship of Senator Shahi Syed, with senators Abdul Rehman Malik, Syed Shibli Faraz, Osman Saifullah Khan, Najma Hameed, Naseema Ehsan and Javed Abbasi attending the meeting.
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Telcos were directed by the committee that there should be a rationalization in taxes caused by change of geography; taxes should be same in all provinces.
The officials of the telecom company told the committee that on the card of Rs100, 19.5 GST and 12.5 income taxes deduction is where the concerns majorly lie. Official told the committee that total revenue of cellular mobile operators was 369 billion during 2016-2017 which was a big contribution.
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The committee was also briefed by Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) regarding tax collection from telcos. The FBR official told the body that tax data sharing had been started from July 2017 and would be completed till June 2018,
“we have audited Telenor and Zong would be the next one to be audited”
Responding to senator Abdul Rehman Malik’s query, he said it was a huge task and for starting it simultaneously, there was need of big capacity which the FBR did not have therefore, it was doing one by one.
No tax violation had been found while auditing Telenor, he added. The committee has given two weeks time to LMKR to deploy the software after required verification.
Source: APP
