Unpaid Sim Replacement Tax
BTRC requested to give opinions on 4 telcos’ CDR data urgently
The National Board of Revenue has requested the Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission to submit urgently its report on the Tk 3,100-crore SIM replacement tax claimed by the revenue board from four mobile phone operators, NBR officials said.
The NBR has been demanding the amount in tax from Grameenphone, Robi, Banglalink and Airtel since early 2012 claiming that the operators had dodged the taxes through selling old SIMs to new clients. The mobile companies, however, denied the allegation saying that they did not sell any SIM to new client but replaced the old SIMs for the original customers.
NBR officials said that the convenor of the SIM replacement tax review committee, Al Amin Pramanik, on Sunday wrote a letter to the BTRC chairman requesting him to send the report immediately as the committee is unable to finalise its report without BTRC’s opinions.
The SIM replacement tax review committee is under huge pressure from the government to submit its report soon as the government is desperately looking for a solution to the dispute before its tenure expires in next January.
The committee was formed with representatives of the NBR, large taxpayers unit (VAT) of the NBR and cell phone operators.
Earlier in November 13, the NBR requested the BTRC to prepare a report on authenticity of call details record documents submitted by the four mobile operators to the committee as proofs regarding subscribers’ identification.
The BTRC was supposed to provide its technical opinions by November 30 on accuracy of the documents, NBR officials said.
They said that cell operators submitted the CDR data retrieving from their servers.
Now the committee wants to be certain that whether the data is accurate or fabricated, they said.
As NBR officials have no technical knowledge to analyse CDR data, it requested the BTRC to do so, they said adding that it would not be possible to finalise the report without BTRC’s opinions on the data.
LTU (VAT) commissioner will settle the dispute on the basis of the report.
Officials of the BTRC said that they had completed physical investigation into the authenticity of the data through visiting the mobile operators’ servers in last week and they would be able to submit their opinions by this week.
Since early 2012 the NBR has been demanding Tk 1,580 crore from GP, Tk 774 crore from Banglalink, Tk 664 crore from Robi and Tk 82 crore from Airtel in SIM replacement taxes, claiming that the operators had dodged the taxes.
-With New Age input
