The National Board of Revenue (NBR) has taken up an initiative to collect 1% surcharge on the amount paid by the subscribers for mobile phone services.
Once introduced by this month, use of mobile phones would be more expensive for the mobile users as the surcharge will be collected from all the services including voice calls, short messaging services and multimedia messaging services, internet and other services.
The surcharge will be imposed on services by all Subscriber Identity Module (SIM) and Removable User Identity Module (RUIM) cards.
The NBR has taken up the move after a gazette notification on the Development Surcharge and Levy (Imposition and Collection) Bill-2015 was issued by parliament on November 21.
Value Added Tax (VAT) wing of NBR had already sent a draft of the rules to the law ministry for vetting, said an official concerned.
Once the vetting is done, an official gazette will be published to effect the surcharge collection.
According to a primary estimate of NBR, once implemented, the NBR may collect Tk140 crore additional revenue from the telecom sector.
Currently, users share 15% VAT on any uses of mobile phone services including voice, data, or any other value added services and it will be 16% soon after imposing the fresh surcharge. There is also a 3%supplementary duty on mobile services.
The NBR first took the move to impose the surcharge in July 2014, but failed to implement it in absence of the related laws and rules.