Phone call tax

Government is continuing its experiment to see just how far the backs of poor can bend before they break

The government is continuing its experiment to see just how far the backs of the poor can bend before they break under the weight of taxes, most recently with a visibly discriminatory tax on phone calls. The new FED levy may not seem like much — Rs0.75 per five minutes on a mobile phone call — but when we consider that most people with smartphones can use WhatsApp, Zoom, Skype, or other free and perfectly legal audio messaging and calling apps and services, it is clear that only people who are less tech-savvy or those without smartphones are the ones making most of the longer mobile phone calls. In both cases, those are predominantly poor people.

Then we must consider who, in general, makes the most longer phone calls. These are the people who do not get to go home to their families — daily wagers, migrant workers, and low-rank government and military officials. Again, all of these people are low-wage workers, and many are in jobs where social mobility is impossible. They can’t afford to buy better phones now to save money tomorrow. They can barely afford to eat, send some money home, and talk to the wives, husbands, parents, and children that they are supporting.

Then there is another problem that would affect lower-income people who do have access to smartphones — network coverage. While urban residents have gotten used to 4G coverage, there are still many areas where the availability of high-speed internet is erratic or spotty, and some pockets where it is not at all available. People in these areas can’t make WhatsApp calls even if they have the appropriate phones. Government data also backs this up. Even though many middle-class rural residents can afford smartphones, barely half of the country’s 183 million active cellular subscribers use mobile internet and broadband services.

And this is not on the companies. They should not be expected to build expensive infrastructure in areas where it will bleed money. But the government should think of alternatives to bleeding the poor.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 29^th, 2021.

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