While prepaid customers are enjoying the tax relief on mobile cards, postpaid customers are still paying the heavy taxes on their cellular networks.
All postpaid customers are being charged with General Sales Tax (GST) of 17.5/18.5% while an additional 12.5% is being charged as withholding tax (WHT).
Supreme Court ordered the suspension of taxes on mobile cards on 12th June order, but the order explicitly mentioned prepaid cards. Hence mobile networks are still charging post paid customers.
According to media reports one telecom company had asked Supreme Court for clarifying whether the order applied on post paid customers or not but received no clarification.
Postpaid customers believe they should be taxed in the same manner as any other network customer. Though it can be said that usually the postpaid customer are the high end customers but does it necessarily means they fall in the tax net?
Some claim it’s a discrimination while others believe that the fault was in Supreme Court decision which omitted post paid customers.