SINCE August, the regulatory tax on cell phones has been increased by a certain amount. For an iPhone owner, this meant an increase from Rs40,000 to Rs46,000. Due to a glitch in the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) system, my friend and I were unable to have our iPhones registered against our recently-used passports.

As we were aware that the difference of duty/taxes between passport and CNIC registration is about Rs9,000, we tried to get our non-PTA approved phones registered on our relatives’ passports who had recently been abroad.

The date of arrival on both passports was within the 60-day framework, as instructed by the PTA website, yet we were unable to register our phones.

Both of us received a text message from the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR), saying that the ‘entered passport information is not eligible under tax exemption FBR baggage rule. Change type to pay tax.’

There was no explanation as to how these passports were ineligible since PTA allows the registration of up to five phones on one passport. The passports we used did not have even a single phone registered on them. The PTA should look into this issue immediately because there is no use of having this facility when one cannot make use of it.

Zoya Nazir
Islamabad

Published in Dawn, September 13th, 2021