The National Board of Revenue (NBR) has finalised a report which says four mobile phone operators will have to pay Tk3,010 crore as tax for SIM resale.
But the operators said they didn’t resell the SIMs, rather replaced them. For replacement of SIM cards there is no tax imposed as it will lead to double taxation.
The revenue board came to the point after the scrutiny of the SIM replacement data supplied by Grameenphone, Banglalink, Robi and Airtel.
According to the NBR, 79% of the documents showed the subscriber identification module (SIM) cards were resold to different subscribers.
SIM resale to a different owner is not allowed by the rule, said the industry insiders.
NBR report said nearly 79% of the submitted documents of SIM replacement didn’t match with the original Subscriber Application Forms (SAF).
The four private mobile companies criticised the report labelling as “unilateral and unacceptable.”
Before 3G auction, a report of a tripartite committee with representatives from telecom regulator BTRC, NBR and mobile operators said a few of the documents were problematic.
The NBR prepared a terms of reference (TOR) last year, which was approved by the finance ministry before the 3G auction to quantify the resold SIMs, said Vivek Sood, chief executive officer of Grameenphone.
But the NBR unilaterally revised the TOR after the operators participated in the 3G auction which is not acceptable, he said while speaking at the company’s yearend financial disclosure at a city hotel last week.
He hoped the NBR chairman would review the matter and find a solution.
In December last year, Association of Mobile Telecom Operators of Bangladesh (Amtob) sent a letter in this regard to the NBR, Bangladesh Telecommunication and Regulatory Commission (BTRC) and telecommunications ministry seeking a solution.
The letter signed by Amtob secretary general TIM Nurul Kabir and other four senior executives from the operators said the NBR used a new process for re-verification of the SIM information.
The SIM Card Replacement Review Committee (SCRRC) of the NBR prepared the report after scrutinising the SAF, SIM Registration Form (SRF) and Undertaking Form (UTF) of the operators submitted between August, 2010 and December, 2011.
According to the SCRRC claim, four mobile phone operators have dodged tax through selling old SIMs to new clients. Currently, the companies pay Tk300 tax against the sale of a SIM card.
The Dhaka Tribune obtained a report on SIM re-verification prepared by the telecom regulator earlier, which showed there was no inconsistency in the information.
BTRC and mobile operators’ representatives didn’t sign the NBR report although they were a part of the re-verification process.
According to the SCRRC report, Grameenphone’s 94.79% of information were inconsistent.
This is the highest among the operators, followed by Banglalink’s 94.83%, Robi’s 93.42% and Airtel’s 29.81% .
The committee verified 1,400 samples from Grameenphone’s data, Banglalink’s 1,200 samples and Airtel’s 1,097 samples
Grameenphone failed to provide any CDR data before 2010, so the committee could not cross-check the data for the period, said the SCRRC report.
It also said Banglalink provided incomplete data of a specific field while Airtel’s CDR failed to provide incoming call record, subscribers’ handset IMIE number and some system logs before the committee.
The NBR has been demanding the amount of tax from the four companies since early 2012.
After analysing the documents, the amount of payable tax decreased to Tk3,010 crore from the initial demand for Tk3,062 crore.
Of the amounts, Grameenphone Tk1,562 crore, Banglalink Tk762 crore, Robi Tk647 crore and Airtel Tk39 crore.
Source: Dhaka Tribune
