Tk 3100cr Sim Replacement Tax
NBR reluctant about full-scale audit into disputed SIMs
The National Board of Revenue high officials ditched a proposal of a tri-partite committee on SIM replacement tax to conduct full scale regular audit and further verify identities of more than 2.5 crore disputed SIMs of four mobile operators.
The committee was formed in July with representatives of NBR, mobile operators and Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission to settle a dispute over the board’s demand for Tk 3,100 crore in SIM replacement taxes from the operators.
In a letter to the commissioner of the large taxpayer unit (LTU-VAT) on Sunday, the committee said that it was impossible to calculate actual tax without regular audit and phone call verification of subscribers as the committee got only a primary idea from the initial probe.
The committee in the last week of August submitted an interim report but could not reach any conclusion on the tax issue.
It is not possible for the government to reach a conclusion based on the interim reports submitted by the committee on August 25 and 27 and if the government takes any decision based on the reports without verifying the identity of the subscribers it will go against the government, said an NBR official.
So, the committee should check the authenticity of the outcomes of the probe through further examination of the documents submitted by the mobile operators — Grameenphone, Airtel, Robi and Banglalink, he said.
He said that GP and Airtel had already applied to the NBR for conducting full scale audit activities.
NBR officials alleged that mobile phone operators, particularly three of them, submitted false, fabricated and manipulated documents related to subscribers’ acquisition form, undertaking form and call details report on the identity of the subscribers.
Considering the above circumstances, the committee needed more time to become sure about the identity of the subscribers and submit a final report, they added.
Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission also found the documents incredible and the commission sought one month for verifying MSISDN (subscription database) data online as offline MSISDN data that operators provided were not reliable, they said.
They said that only GP provided online MSISDN data, which is subscription record of SIMs.
Through instructions regarding the next steps of the committee on Monday, LTU-VAT commissioner Md Abdul Kafi also agreed to the plan of the committee to verify the identification of the subscribers by making phone calls to the subscribers, NBR officials said.
He, however, has not agreed about conducting audit anew, saying that it was possible to reach a decision based on the report to be submitted by the committee after further review, they said.
He also instructed to verify MSISDN data online saying that offline data was not reliable.
The LTU-VAT commissioner on July 28 formed the committee consisting representatives of the NBR, mobile phone operators, Association of Mobile Telephone Operators of Bangladesh and BTRC to examine the issue related to SIM replacement tax worth Tk 3,100 crore that the LTU-VAT had claimed from the operators since early 2012.
Then, the NBR claimed a total of 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 operators had not paid the amounts as SIM replacement tax.
According to the LTU, several of its investigations had found that mobile operators sold old SIMs, most of
which had been abandoned by original clients, to new clients but did not pay the tax for those SIMs saying that they just replaced those SIMs to the original clients.
But the mobile companies denied the allegations saying that they did not sell any SIM to new clients but replaced the old SIMs for the old customers.
The committee in the last one month examined documents such as SAF, UTF, MSISDN, CDR, mobile handset identity number and base transceiver station location of more than 1,000 SIMs of Banglalink, Robi and Airtel and more than 600 SIMs of GP at random to find out if the operators had replaced the SIMs for the original subscribers or sold it to new clients.
According to the NBR officials, scrutiny of such a few number of SIMs is not the actual representation of the facts as the GP had replaced 1,34,58,354 SIMs between July 2007 and July 2011, Airtel replaced 5,55,217 SIMs from February 2009 to July 2011, Banglalink replaced 70,21,834 SIMs between June 2009 and December 2011 and Robi replaced 52,61,541 SIMs from March 2007 to December 2011.
The outcome of the committee’s scrutiny differs in different criteria, committee members said.
The investigation found contradictory results for the three operators when they took SAF, UTF, FNF number and BTS location into consideration, they said.
They suspected that the operators had provided fabricated documents related to SAF, UTF, CDR and BTS location, which made the outcomes look conflicting.
-With New Age input
