Imagine, for a moment, that you live in Pakistan. You want to top up your mobile phone, so you buy a 100 Rs. ($1) card to add the credit to your phone. That should mean you now have $1 worth of calling time or texting to use however you’d like, right? Nope, not in Pakistan. In fact, by the time all the relevant taxes are deducted, you’ll barely have half that.
Pakistan’s mobile sector was already one of the world’s most heavily-taxed, but recently the country announced another 5 percent tax hike will go into effect on July 1. According to Propakistani, this brings the total tax burden to nearly 35 percent, and since Pakistan’s mobile companies also add a 7 percent service charge, it means that on any given 100 Rs. top-up card, users actually get only 58.5 Rs. ($0.59) worth of credit. Weak.
Unfortunately users really don’t have any choice in the matter. As they say, the two things you can be sure of in life are death and taxes, and unless Pakistan’s government decides to reduce the tax burden there’s really nothing end-users can do. But given that Pakistan’s government just upped the tax rate by five percent, relief doesn’t look to be coming anytime soon.
(via Propakistani)
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