Senate body expresses concern over rationalization in telecos tax regime

ISLAMABAD: Senate Standing committee on Information Technology and Telecommunication Wednesday asked telecom companies to file petition regarding tax exemption and rationalization of taxation regime, than committee would take up this issue in the parliament.

The committee was met here under the chairmanship of Senator Shahi Syed while senators Abdul Rehman Malik, Syed Shibli Faraz, Osman Saifullah Khan, Najma Hameed, Naseema Ehsan and Javed Abbasi also attended the meeting.

The committee directed to telcos that there should be rationalization in taxes caused by change of geography, taxes should be same in all provinces.

The official of telecom company told the committee that on the card of Rs100, 19.5 GST and 12.5 income tax deducted on which committee showed its concerns.

Official told the committee that total revenue of cellular mobile operators was 369 billion during 2016-2017 which was a big contribution.

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.

Haroon Shareef from LMKR briefed the committee.

Later in a meeting attended by LMKE, CDA, FIA and PTA discussed all the agendas. On which FIA played a positive role and directed all the parties to resolve the issues with mutual understanding.