Five telecom companies and FBR have agreed to resolve Rs. 47 billion tax dispute through out of court settlement, told the FBR head Ali Arshad Hakim during a meeting of the sub-committee of the National Assembly Standing Committee on Information Technology (IT). This is exactly the way the dispute was going to get resolved when FBR was going to give the telcos the waiver on Rs. 47 billion tax on inter-connection charges but NAB had taken the notice of the issue and had reverted FBR’s draft for waiving the tax. However, it appears that the settlement has been reached now between the telcos, FBR and NAB – since the matter is said to be resolved with-in a month’s time through the constitution of Alternative Dispute Resolution Committee (ADRC) and no strict measures, including attachment of banks accounts of the telecom companies, would be taken. Telecom companies, which were earlier seeking the exemption of tax through Section 65 of Sales Tax Act, 1990, later on took a stand that tax was not payable at all and that this was some kind of misunderstanding on FBR’s part.
