IHC prevents govt from blocking sims of non-filers

Islamabad: The Islamabad High Court (IHC) Tuesday stopped the government from blocking mobile phone sim of tax non-filers.

According to the details, Chief Justice IHC Aamer Farooq issued a restraining order till May 27 on the request of the mobile phone company.

It is pertinent to note that an agreement has been reached between the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) and telecom operators on the issue of blocking the sims of non-filers across the country, under which the series of blocking the sims of non-filers was started from May 10. 

According to FBR, on May 10, details of sim blocking of 5,000 non-filers were provided to telecom operators.

According to FBR officials, telecom operators had agreed to manually block sims in small batches.

FBR has decided to impose 90 percent additional withholding tax instead of 1.5% on more than 0.57 million non-filers.

According to media reports, 90 percent additional withholding tax will be levied on non-filers till submission of income tax returns, if a non-filer user loads a balance of Rs100 out of which Rs90 will go to FBR.

If the mobile phone companies block the sims of these non-filers, even if they do not submit their income tax returns, then if they use another mobile phone sim, they will have to pay 90 percent additional tax on that too.

Additional tax will be applied on each load of non-filers, additional tax will also be applied on mobile and data load.