NBR may slap tax if details don't match

The National Board of Revenue plans to collect Tk 100 as tax from mobile operators for every SIM for which the users' names and details differ in the re-registration and biometric verification process.

At present, there are about 13.19 crore active SIMs, of which only 30 percent have been registered using the actual subscribers' details, according to industry insiders.

For security reasons, the government has called for re-registration of all SIM cards with information of the actual users from December 16.

If the names differ in the re-registration process, it will be counted as a fresh connection and the NBR wants to slap tax of Tk 100 on each of them.

NBR Chairman Md Nojibur Rahman said a final decision on the issue is yet to be taken. The tax authority will take opinion from the telecom regulator and some other authorities before it makes a call on the issue, he added.

Mobile operators said the move would lead to “double taxation”.

The chief executive officers of all six operators have sent a letter to the NBR demanding a statutory regulatory order exempting tax on SIM cards re-registration by subscribers under the government drive.

A copy of the letter was forwarded to the telecom ministry as well.

The operators said they already paid taxes to the government when the SIM was first bought.

“We have already paid tax for the SIMs and no new sale is taking place here. So the government should consider this,” said a senior official of a mobile operator.

Retailers and distributors registered SIMs with certain NID numbers and now the actual users are updating the database with their own NID numbers. A pilot project for SIM re-registration and biometric verification began on November 15.

If the NBR charges them for updating the information, they have no other option but to pass it onto the customers, the operators said.