Govt imposes Rs 100b taxes on mobile, internet users

The government wants to impose taxes worth Rs 100 billion on mobile and internet users.

The finance ministry in the budget document proposes to impose an additional tax burden of Rs 100 billion on mobile and internet users.

The Finance Bill 2021-22 proposes to impose an additional burden of Rs 70 billion on federal excise duty on mobile users and Rs 30 billion on internet users.

It is proposed to impose other taxes on account of the federal excise duty of Rs 1 on every mobile phone call for more than a minute and a national excise duty of 10 paise on every SMS.

The proposals include a federal excise duty of Rs 5 per GB of internet data. Excise duty is also proposed. The budget document proposes to reduce the holding tax on mobile phone services from 12.5 percent to 10 percent.

Budget killed digital Pakistan.

Additional taxes on telecom consumers for SMS, calls, and internet data have killed digital Pakistan’s vision.

Pakistan is already low as 90th in the world for internet inclusion and 2nd last in Asia.  Pakistani consumer is already paying Withholding tax and other indirect taxes (one of the highest in the world)

Why should poor Pakistani men pay taxes on 3-minute calls, SMS, and the internet? If the government charges 5 Rs on 1 GB of data, then an average student uses 25 GB for online classes per month; why the government has imposed this tax on students?

The people starting an online business and e-commerce will suffer due to these taxes.

Poor laborers in cities only call families far in villages; thus, why should they pay extra even to reach families.

According to a telecom industry analyst, the new taxes imposed on telecom users will access the fundamental right of connectivity out of the commoner’s reach and adversely affect the government’s vision of Digital Pakistan.

The net impact of telecom-related taxes could have an overall negative impact despite reducing FED and WHT.