ISLAMABAD: The Fede­ral Board of Revenue (FBR) on Friday said that it will repay the excess amount of duty and taxes paid on the import of mobile phones due to a glitch in the system.

An FBR statement said the issue will be resolved on Saturday afternoon after making necessary changes in the WeBOC system.

“Due to this glitch in the system, all those who paid more duty would be refunded the excess amount forthwith. FBR regrets the inconvenience caused to those who had to pay excess duty and taxes,” the statement said.

“Recently, in a meeting with the Pakistan Telecom­munication Autho­ri­ty, it transpired that passengers can re­­gister up to five mobile phones on their passports and in case of high end phones of more than US$500, the difference of duty/taxes between passport and CNIC registration is about Rs9,000,” it added.

Accordingly, in order to correct this anomaly and to limit the registration of mobile phone against passport up to one set, the WeBOC module was modified through change request form. However, during the process, the exemption of withholding tax was also deleted and hence the system was showing total taxes on passport as Rs36,720.

The FBR statement added that the issue has been taken up with Director Karachi and the team is reviewing the module to resolve the issue and restore the previous amount of leviable duty/taxes.

Published in Dawn, May 22nd, 2021