Withdraws AIT, reduces customs duty
The government on Saturday passed the Finance Bill-2014, imposing one per cent surcharge on the prices of imported and locally-manufactured mobile phone sets and reducing taxes on the items at import stage. The surcharge is titled ‘information and telecommunication development surcharge’. The government withdrew 5 per cent advance income tax and reduced customs duty to 5 per cent from 10 per cent on import of mobile sets while 15 per cent value-added tax on the item will remain unchanged.
In the finance bill placed by finance minister AMA Muhith in parliament on June 5 had proposed imposition of 15 per cent VAT and 5 per cent AIT. Earlier, importers had to pay 10 per cent customs duty on import of the product.
Officials of the National Board of Revenue said that the government in the last moment decided to impose the surcharge to collect some fund from the item.
They said the fund might be used in education and health sectors.
The NBR will prepare a rule to collect ICT development surcharge, they said.
They said that surcharge on imported mobile sets would be collected during collection of customs duty while that on locally-produced sets would be collected during collection of VAT.
They said that the prices of mobile phone set both the imported and locally-produced might increase.
-With New Age input