Govt. gazettes new revenue proposals

The government has gazetted a series of amendments to the Finance Act to give effect to several revenue proposals in the budget 2018, including taxes on cellular towers, luxury motor vehicles, vehicle entitlement and carbon emissions.

Further taxes have been slapped on annual renewal of company registrations while all financial institutions have been called to pay a Debt Repayment Levy in a bid to reduce the country’s debt burden.

According to the gazette notification issued last Friday, the mobile phone services companies will have to pay Rs.200,000 per year for every tower they own on a quarterly basis in four equal installments from January 1, 2019.

The telco operators had lobbied against this proposal at the time it was proposed saying that it could possibly result in major foreign investors in the local telco sector exiting the market.

Nearly 6,750 towers are used by the five mobile operators to support the needs of a population of 20 million. In April this year, Hutch and Etisalat announced a merger, which will result in the number of operators in the market coming down to four.

Meanwhile, any assembled or unassembled diesel motor vehicle of which cylinder capacity exceeds 2,300cc or a petrol motor vehicle of which the cylinder capacity exceeds 1,800cc or an electric vehicle of which motor power of the engine exceeds 200 Kw will be liable for ‘Luxury Tax,’ which should be paid at the time of importation to the Director General of Customs.