Mobile operators association today urged the government to withdraw the tax burden over mobile usage like supplementary duty and surcharge on all services.

They also placed a demand to withdraw VAT on internet use as well to bring the entire country under digital coverage.

Association of Mobile Telecom Operators of Bangladesh (AMTOB) placed the demands at a press conference at Hotel La Vinci in Dhaka where organisation’s Secretary General TIM Nurul Kabir alleged that the National Board of Revenue acts like an autocratic organisation and they are becoming the main obstacle to establishing a digital country.

The operators suggested the government to go for a comprehensive taxation policy instead.

“The industry is already burdened with taxation processes at each stage of the value chain,” Kabir said.

That is why they are demanding an overall tax revision for sustainable growth of the economy, he added.

Currently the corporate tax rate for the telecom sector is 40 percent for listed and 45 percent for non-listed companies, and AMTOB said it should be reduced to 25 percent and 35 percent.

Terming the corporate tax structure for mobile operators discriminatory, Kabir said that if the government withdraws the tax burden, its revenue from this sector will increase in the next two to three years, and its contribution to GDP will also rise by 2-3 percent.

The finance minister had proposed to increase the supplementary duty by 2 percentage points to 5 percent, which was already made effective by a statutory regulatory order (SRO) on June 2.

Earlier, Tarana Halim, state minister for telecom, also urged the government to withdraw the supplementary duty for the sake of digitisation. A meeting on the issue is scheduled for today between the telecom division and the National Board of Revenue.