Cell operators evade tax worth billons

It was disclosed during a meeting of National Assembly sub-committee on Information Technology held here on Tuesday to discuss the multi billion tax evasion by the cellular operators in the country.During the meeting officials of the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) informed the committee that department has completed the investigation in this whole scam and came to conclusion that interconnect charges are liable to tax and cellular operators did not pay billion rupees to the national exchequer for which they would be accountable.NAB officials said that FBR in this episode is on same page as department did not collect amount from the cellular operators which yielded billion of rupees loss to the national economy.NAB officials told the committee that they would hold a meeting with the Chairman FBR Arshad Hakeem by the end of this week and after that official inquiry would be initiated against the responsible persons.They said that they will take chairman FBR into confidence and after that official action would be started against all those who were involved in this criminal act.Convener of the committee ms Anusha Rehman said that this is a very sensitive issue which should not be exaggerated. She said that officials should take it seriously and should not allow anyone to raise his finger about any misconduct in the investigative process.She said that initially FBR issued two notifications in which they once said that Celecos are liable to pay FED on interconnect charges but later issued letter against it and this situation resulted into many controversies therefore we are concerned that this situation may not happen again.Sub-committee also resented the delay in the actions taken by the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) to eradicate spam text messages from certain elements.Legislators said that authority has been failed to control such evils and have not taken concrete steps for redressal of this menace.Committee recommended officials of PTA to initiate a media campaign and inform the masses that can complaints about the spam messages to the authority and PTA should ensure concrete steps to address these complaints.