The National Board of Revenue has taken an initiative to impose surcharge at the rate of one per cent on mobile phone services including talk time to boost revenue collection from the sector, officials said. They said that the proposed surcharge would be named ‘development surcharge’. The revenue to be collected from the sector will be spent in poverty reduction in rural areas, according to an instruction of the finance minister AMA Muhith.
Officials of the revenue board said that mobile phone users will have to pay the surcharge.
The revenue board has taken the move following the recommendation of the prime minister, Sheikh Hasina, made in her budget speech in parliament on June 28, they said.
Finance minister AMA Muhith has recently instructed the NBR officials to finalise the surcharge collection method based on the discussion with the mobile phone operators and prepare a summery for the approval of the cabinet.
The NBR is expecting to get around Tk 250 crore in revenue a year by imposing the surcharge considering the prices of used services by the mobile subscribers.
According to the primary estimate of the NBR, the country’s around 11 crore mobile subscribers spend nearly Tk 25,000 crore for receiving value-added services including voice services, SMS and MMS services, internet and other services provided by the mobile operators.
Currently, there are six mobile phone companies—Grameenphone, Robi, Banglalink, Airtel, Citycell and state-owned Teletalk—operating in the country.
The prime minister in her speech recommended for imposing one per cent surcharge on mobile uses saying that the money derived from the sector would be spent for the education and health sectors.
Later, Muhith accepted the recommendation and now he instructed that the money would be spent in poverty reduction in rural areas.
In the Finance Bill-2014, the government, however, imposed one per cent surcharge titled ‘information and telecommunication development surcharge’ on the prices of imported and locally-manufactured mobile phone sets.
The revenue board on Tuesday discussed with the Association of Mobile Telephone Operators of Bangladesh about the imposition of surcharge on mobile phone uses.
At the meeting, NBR informed that cell phone operators would collect the surcharge along with value-added tax and then deposit to the government exchequer, officials said.
They also assured them that mobile operators had nothing to be worried as the proposed surcharge would not be imposed on them, rather it will go to the subscribers.
At the meeting, mobile phone operators mentioned that imposition of any new tax would hamper their business as subscribers might reduce the uses of services because of new tax burden on them.
‘We requested the revenue board to consider the impact of the proposed surcharge on the affordability of marginalised people as the device is now not just a device to talk, rather it has become an instrument to provide multifaceted services including agriculture, health, education, banking and to connect ‘unconnected’ rural people,’ AMTOB secretary general TIM Nurul Kabir told New Age after the meeting.
Representatives of the mobile phone operators also requested the NBR to conduct a holistic analysis to review the taxation and regulatory steps on the sector instead of imposing excessive taxes in different names, he said.
He said that revenue board would sit with operators again to finalise the matter.
Currently, mobile phone users have to pay 15 per cent VAT on any services.
-With New Age input
