Recently, a huge question mark aroused on FBR about their performance. Meanwhile, a matter aroused about FBR when the capacity hindrances of FBR was highlighted at the meeting of Senate standing committee on finance. They summoned FBR to present a modified audit of telecom companies, hence, they discovered that FBR is lack of capacity to analyze transaction wise data about the retained taxes telecommunication companies needs to pay. The director of FBR also agreed of not getting 100% data from telecom companies because of these constraints. the senator Saleem Mandviwalla said that Due to this capacity retainment of Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) towards telecom companies, numerous companies and taxpayers are getting overburdened to achieve their annual targets. As the world bank report already says Pakistan till yet have excused for 3.4 trillion amounts of taxes.
FBR said that telecom companies show an unwillingness to them for sharing the data of the customer. The reason of unwillingness was they wanted to maintain the confidentiality of their customer data and due to the huge amount of customer base. It is reported that the issue was resolved after the involvement of PTA, Ufone, Telenor, and Mobilink, they agreed to provide all information of their customers. While the commissioner of PTA said that from 10 years FBR is lacking the capacity to analyze the transaction data.
Meanwhile, FBR representative declared that they have installed a software for collecting Biweekly Data from every telecom operator. They have formulated a complete online interface among telecom companies and their organization.
At the senate meeting, Shahi Syed quoted that for the mobile phone cards which are more than Rs 100 are should not be permitted to pay the retained tax. The reason was most of the Rs 100 card is used by low-income people. he also advised PTA not to distribute free sims nationwide and start eliminating this activity.
Besides software launch, the Senate standing committee gave the audit contract of telecom companies to a private sector.
It been a long time FBR is unable to collect necessary data and taxes, there were a lot of loopholes in their process. Thus, installation of the software comes out to be a positive action for FBR. Moreover, it supports them to vanish the accusations and question answers spreading against them. The Biweekly software launch will give a boost to FBR positively but FBR is inefficient not only towards telecom sector, but they also got no certificates about tobacco manufacturers, while it’s been reported that they have crossed 60 billion of taxes to pay.
