Telecommunication industry remained a major contributor to national exchequer in terms of multiple taxes paid by costumers. These revenues have shown growth with accelerated pace on the increase usage of different telephony service by millions of customers in the country.
The customers using different telephony services have paid Rs 23.429 billion on the account of General Sales Tax (GST) in the first half of current fiscal year 2010-11, Federal Bureau of Statistics (FBR) quoted in its recently released report.
This GST amount has shown 8 percent growth in terms of its value compared with the corresponding period of fiscal year 2009-2010 in which 21.701 billion rupees were collected by the tax authorities.
GST on telephony services is originally Federal Excise Duty (FED) but it is collected in the mode of GST on every service including voice, text, value-added, subscription of call packages and SMS bundles.
The GST/FED imposed on telephony services is charged at 19.5 percent, which is highest among all sectors compared with their GST rate of 17 percent.
Telecom sector is the second major spinner among all sectors after petroleum that contributed heavily to the overall generation of GST. Its share in the overall GST is stood at 16.7 percent as compared with last year which was slightly lower and stood at 16.2 percent.
The collection from telecom sector, the second major source of sales tax, has improved by 8 percent due to increased usage of the telecom services by 9.2 percent, FBR mentioned in its report.
The growth in services utilities were seen despite millions of flood affected subscribers were unable to use telecom services for couple of months (July to August 2010).
Telecom sector has generated Rs 12.921 billion taxes on the account of Withholding Tax (WT) in the fiscal half of current fiscal year 2010-2011, FBR reported. These figures showed growth of 18.6 percent as compared with Rs. 10.89 billion WT paid by customers in the same period of last fiscal year.
The share of telecom sector in the overall WT collected by FBR is stood at 8.5 percent in July-Dec 2010. The sector is the fourth major contributor among all sectors after contracts, imports and salary heads.
The WT was paid by customers as direct tax at the rate 10 percent in the first half of current fiscal year, which has recently been increased to 11.5 percent by the government. This tax is deducted on the recharge of load/balance through scratch card or easy-load from prepaid customers whereas postpaid or fixed-lined customers pay it at the time of bill payments.
Overall the users of telephony services have paid Rs 36.35 billion in the July-December 2010 as against the figure of Rs 32.591 billion paid in same months of 2009, showing 11.53 percent growth.
These all direct (WT) and indirect taxes (GST) are paid by customers but deducted by telecom operators including landline, cellular, and wireless as withholding agent of their subscribers. Later, taxes are transferred to revenue collecting authority, FBR, by operators therefore there is negligible incidence of tax evasion in telecom sector.
It is pertinent to note here that that a total tax of Rs. 36.35 billion (GST + with holding tax) translates into a combined revenues of Rs. 92.86 billion rupees for all telecom companies in first 6 months of fiscal year 2010-11.
kha jao kha jao sub kuch khaa jao aur dekaar be mut marna aur awam bhook say mar rahi hai … enkay gunnah deakh ker tu Jahanam be pareshan ho jay ga.
Allah humain be maaf farmay.
This is a good sign that telecom sector is paying tax but what about those people who are not paying tax. Can anybody share with me the figure of tax which FBR is collecting from POOR people like politicians, industrialist, chartered accountants (who are advisors of businessman). Mr. Babar Awan is the minister of Telecom but he don’t have any idea of this ministry. This is a joke Ex-minister of IT was Khosa, what a good telecom engineer …..
Collecting tax is good sign as I have already mentioned but it’s not only few percentage of the actual amount from all sectors. Still most of the politicians and industrialist are not making payment of tax. According to rules of Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan, every company is liable to submit yearly financials but the company who is doing audit (Chartered Accountants) are playing positive role for Pakistan. If any consultant is advising any person and showing him the illegal way to reduce tax then he cannot say that he loves Pakistan.
On the other hand where our Government is spending this amount, this is a big question as well. Are they spending this amount on general public or on president’s visit of Turkey and on visit of PM to UK to sit with his big brother ALTAF BHAI, or Palace of Multan, Balawal House Karachi or Palace of Raiwind. They don’t bother that why the economy of Pakistan is going down. Why we are still facing budget deficit? Why we are getting more loans from IMF and World Bank.
Here I would like to request everybody to kindly save this Country. Please …………………….
yar jab etna paise sirf ek he sector se araha ha to phr samajh se bahr k yahan high unemployeement q ha
Rs. 36.35 Billion Tax should be returned to Pakistani citizen in the form of basic facilities like cheap medical care etc.
Just like the citizens of Europe pays loads of tax and then enjoy facilities given to them by their governments. :-)
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