Recently, cellular service providing firms agreed to share consumer data with the FBR
KARACHI: Recently, cellular service providing firms agreed to share consumer data with the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) to check for the latter’s sales and withholding tax collection. The scheme to share the data has been employed as a tool for better and verified tax collection with the involvement of the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority. With vague and not-so-transparent laws over consumers’ right to privacy in Pakistan, less is left to be questioned over this move of the governmental bodies. However, when the three aforementioned parties have agreed upon an arrangement to facilitate the FBR, consumer facilitation must be given due consideration too.
Currently, the sales tax for a Rs100 mobile card is almost one-fourth of the entire monetary worth of the card. As a result, any further tax being imposed over the same value would be unjust and unfair. With proportional taxing, the amount deducted as tax continues to make for more of a deduction as the value of the commodity decreases over time or due to inflation.
Hence, instead of gathering data from cellular service providers with the purpose of increased tax collection, the FBR should rather employ progressive tax policies and broaden its tax net through other forms of taxation, mostly in the form of VAT on luxury goods and property tax.
Shaheer Ahmed
Published in The Express Tribune, November 8th, 2017.
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