The Islamabad High Court stopped the government from blocking mobile phone SIMs of tax non-filers

The Islamabad High Court stopped the government from blocking mobile phone SIMs of tax non-filers.

Chief Justice Islamabad High Court Aamir Farooq issued a restraining order till May 27 on the request of the mobile phone company.

Salman Akram Raja, the lawyer of the mobile phone company, said that the amendment of the law is against the fundamental right of freedom of business in Article 18 of the Constitution, no legislation can be enacted that contradicts the fundamental rights given in the Constitution.

Lawyer Salman Akram Raja said that the government cannot take the power to block people’s mobile phone SIMs by amending the law, blocking more than 5 lakh SIMs will result in a loss of Rs 100 crore annually.

It should be noted that an agreement has been reached between the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) and telecom operators on the issue of blocking the sims of non-filers across the country, under which the series of blocking the sims of non-filers has started from May 10. had gone.

According to FBR, on May 10, details of SIM blocking of 5,000 non-filers were provided to telecom operators.

According to FBR officials, telecom operators had agreed to manually block SIMs in small batches.

FBR has decided to impose 90% additional withholding tax instead of 1.5% on more than 570,000 non-filers.

According to sources, 90% additional withholding tax will be levied on non-filers till submission of income tax returns, if a non-filer user loads a balance of Rs. 90 out of which Rs. 90 will go to FBR.

If the mobile phone companies block the SIMs of these non-filers, even if they do not submit their income tax returns, then if they use another mobile phone SIM, they will have to pay 90% additional tax on that too. .

Additional tax will be applied on each load of non-filers, additional tax will also be applied on mobile and data load.