In a significant move to enforce tax compliance, the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) announced on Wednesday that 7,167 individuals have filed their tax returns for the year 2023 following the blockage of their mobile SIM cards. This action is part of a broader initiative aimed at ensuring adherence to the country’s tax laws.
Starting from May 14, the FBR provided the CNICs of approximately 60,000 non-filers to three major telecom companies—Telenor, Ufone, and Jazz—to disable the mobile services of these individuals. Notably, the FBR did not have specific information regarding the exact number of SIM cards issued to these 60,000 non-filers.
Bakhtiar Khan, the FBR spokesperson, confirmed that the department received an additional 7,167 income tax returns for the year 2023. He explained that the FBR had shared CNIC data with telecom service providers in 12 batches of 5,000 each. The initial compliance rate was low, with only 508 returns filed from the first batch. However, this number rose to 1,514 returns in the final batch, submitted on May 28. The blocked SIMs were reactivated shortly after the tax returns were filed and verified by the FBR.
The process of SIM blockage commenced on April 10, following an agreement between the FBR and the telecom operators to initiate the manual blocking in small batches. The first batch of 5,000 non-filers was sent to telecom operators for compliance on May 14. Since then, 12 batches of data have been shared with the companies.
While Telenor, Ufone, and Jazz have complied with the FBR’s directive, Zong has challenged the order in the Islamabad High Court, seeking a stay against its implementation. The court has restrained the federal government from taking any coercive action against Zong but has not issued a stay to halt the blocking of SIMs for non-filers. The case is scheduled for further hearing on June 5.
To facilitate the ongoing manual blockage process, the FBR has established an 18-member Joint Working Group (JWG) with representatives from the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA), Ufone, Telenor, and Jazz. Zong, however, is not represented in this group due to its legal challenge.
On April 30, the FBR published a detailed list of 506,671 individuals who failed to file their tax returns for 2023. The FBR identified a total of 2.4 million potential taxpayers not registered in the tax system and issued notices to these individuals. From this pool, over half a million were selected for SIM blockade based on the criterion that they had declared taxable income in one of the past three years but did not file returns for 2023.
According to the FBR’s Active Taxpayers List, 4.2 million tax returns had been received by March 1, compared to 3.8 million during the same period last year, indicating a slight increase in compliance.