The National Board of Revenue is likely to conduct an inspection into Grameenphone’s documents as the company allegedly dodged tax worth Tk 1,580 crore by replacing 1.35 crore SIMs between 2007 and 2011, violating the law, officials concerned said.
NBR officials said the leading mobile operator failed to provide the necessary documents during a hearing on Tuesday to resolve the SIM replacement tax issue which was recently sent back to the tax office by the High Court.
The NBR officials said the GP also requested to postpone the proceedings saying the company was not ready to face such a hearing at that moment.
‘The high officials of different mobile companies are publicly saying that they want to resolve the tax issues soon, but the government is not helping. The case has been pending with the NBR a long time and now the GP is saying it is not prepared,’ said an NBR official.
He said the GP in the hearing said that it was impossible for the company to provide physical documents of 1.35 crore SIMs which the NBR claimed to be replaced illegally.
‘We have got around 10,000 complaints and also conducted several investigations. In each investigation report the GP was found violating the law,’ he said.
The company sold SIMs, most of which had been abandoned by original clients, to new clients, he said. ‘But when the company paid the tax, it showed that the original clients drew the SIMs again by paying minimum charges,’ he said.
In some cases, he said,
NBR found evidences that the running SIMs had been switched off without the consent of the original clients for selling those to new clients.
The revenue board also found such activities by three other mobile companies — Banglalink, Robi and Airtel.
The NBR last week offered the mobile phone operators to resolve the dispute outside the court in a faster and easier manner through the Alternative Dispute Resolution.
The NBR made the proposal as the High Court sent back the case related to SIM replacement tax to the Large Taxpayers Unit (VAT) on June 6 and directed the revenue authorities to solve the issue with the four mobile operators — Grameenphone, Banglalink, Robi, Airtel — within 120 days.
In early 2012, the NBR claimed Tk 1,580 crore from the GP, Tk 774 crore from Banglalink, Tk 664 crore from Robi and Tk 82 crore from Airtel saying that the mobile operators did not pay the amounts as SIM replacement tax.
Out of the unpaid SIM replacement tax, Tk 2,000 crore is original tax while more than Tk 1,000 crore is for interest and late fees, the NBR officials said.
Asked about the issue the GP denied making any formal comment on the matter.
‘It will be a joint audit by the NBR and the GP to resolve the replacement SIM tax-related dispute. The NBR will not conduct any new audit on the matter. We offered the NBR some assistance which requires their physical presence to our office,’ a senior GP official told New Age on Wednesday.
-With New Age input
