27 January 2004	Tuesday	04 Zilhaj 1424

KARACHI, Jan 26: The Pakistan Telecommunication Company will collect a significant amount of withholding tax this year by penalizing phone subscribers for no fault of theirs.

The phone utility has included arrears of value-added services in this month's PTCL bills. Since the amount of withholding tax charged by the PTCL every month is proportional to the total bill, the subscribers of the phone utility will pay a lot more withholding tax than they should.

The executive vice-president of the PTCL, Iqbal Waseem, admitted that PTCL subscribers would have to pay needlessly more withholding tax because of the inclusion of arrears for value- added services, including caller's line identification.

He added that while there were a large number of value-added services offered by the PTCL, this month's bills included charges for caller's line identification. He explained that the PTCL had not been collecting charges for caller's line identification for a long time.

Speaking to Dawn on Monday evening, he said: "It has been detected by the auditors of the PTCL that the phone utility has not been charging value-added services. They have asked us to start collecting the outstanding dues for the value- added services from this month. We have included the arrears for the value-added services in bills. However, if subscribers cannot afford to pay the bill lump sum, they could pay it in instalments."

He explained that the PTCL staff at the EOBI House (formerly Awami Markaz) would help the subscribers of the phone utility. He added that the phone utility would afterwards take action against those officials who failed to issue proper bills in time.

"A government inquiry is a long, tedious process. But the phone utility will determine why bills including charges for value-added services were not issued in time. The officials found guilty of negligence following an in-house inquiry will be taken to task," he promised.

PTCL officials explained that the PTCL charged Rs50 withholding tax on a Rs1,000 phone bill. They added that the withholding tax, proportional to the net bill, went as high as Rs300. They pointed out that the withholding tax and general sales tax collected by the PTCL was passed onto the Central Board of Revenue.

They pointed out that even those subscribers who managed to get their "other charges" written off at the EOBI House would have to pay the withholding tax incurred because of the inclusion of the arrears in the bills.

They recalled that the phone utility had recently simplified the process of obtaining the value-added services of caller's line identification. "All a subscriber has to do is to place a call to 106 from the phone on which he wants the CLI facility. He has to disclose the particulars of the phone connection. He is given the CLI facility for which is charged Rs30 every month."

They said the number of subscribers opting for the value- added service of caller's line identification had risen following the simplification of the procedure.