The Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) has approved an installment-based payment facility for sales tax on mobile phones brought into Pakistan from abroad for personal use.
Under the new procedure, citizens will no longer have to pay the entire sales tax amount at once. Instead, they can pay the applicable tax in installments. However, all outstanding tax must be fully paid before the end of the relevant financial year.
The FBR introduced the facility through an amendment to the Ninth Schedule of the Sales Tax Act, 1990.
The installment facility will be activated through the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority’s Device Identification, Registration and Blocking System (DIRBS).
The development comes around two months after the PTA announced a tax installment program for mobile devices.
The government had ended the facility allowing passengers to bring mobile phones into Pakistan without paying applicable taxes in July 2019. Since then, payment of relevant duties and taxes has generally been required for mobile phones to operate on local networks.
The new FBR decision is expected to provide overseas Pakistanis and other travelers bringing phones for personal use with greater flexibility in managing their tax payments.