ISLAMABAD (MEDIA)
Large Tax-payer Unit (LTU) Islamabad of Federal Board of Revenue yesterday recovered Rs. 2.038 from Pakistan Telecommunication Authority by freezing its accounts.
According to sources, bank accounts were held and then freed after the recovery of unpaid taxes from year 2006.
Pakistan Telecommunication Authority and LTU Islamabad are long running this dispute over taxes.
There was a time when PTA hadn’t paid any taxes for ten years valuing over Rs. 10 billion. PTA claims that it is a government body itself and must pay all the revenues to government exchequer itself, however, LTU Islamabad is of the view that taxes must be collected from the revenues that PTA generates – in accordance with law – and this way the money will ultimately go to government exchequer.
LTU Islamabad had attached Pta accounts last year for similar reasons, and had recovered Rs. 3.6 billion. Fbr had collected PKrs 3.43 billion in 2010 by carrying a similar action against the telecom authority.
It merits mentioning here that PTA collects various license fee and other dues from Telecom operators, which according to FBR are termed as revenues and must be taxed.