KARACHI: State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) has assured that there will be no limit to electronic payment for duty and taxes.
The SBP assured this at a meeting with office bearers of Karachi Customs Agents Association (KCAA), a statement said on Monday.
The KCAA said that from January 20, 2021 the collection of custom duties and taxes of more than one million rupees will be collected through e-payment. The e-payment system shall provide round the clock facility to the taxpayers for their payments.
It said that on the request of KCAA, a comprehensive joint meeting has been conducted by the SBP through video link on Zoom Cloud headed by the Director Finance Department of State Bank of Pakistan and attended by more than 60 Regional Heads of all designated Banks and KCAA’s delegation was held on January 07, 2021 at 3:00 PM, wherein the issues pertaining to banking sectors were discussed.
In order to facilitate the trade and taxpayers the following decisions were taken by the competent authorities of SBP in the said meeting.
It was decided that for the payment of Custom Duties and Taxes, any amount can be paid through cheque in any branch of same bank alongwith PSID instead of following the process for issuance of Pay Order.
However in case any variation, the excess/additional amount of taxes will be collected through cash or in case the taxes amount is less than of the cheque amount, the excess amount will be deposited in the account of taxpayers just like PD Account.
The KCAA highlighted that few banks have different limits for account holders and they do not allow payment of duty and taxes of more than their assigned / authorized limits through the module of e-payment.
It was agreed by the State Bank of Pakistan that no capping /limit will be fixed in future, the taxpayers and stakeholders can paid their customs duties and taxes without having any limits.
KCAA also pointed out that Corporate Customers do not have ATM Cards, Mobile Apps and Internet Banking, hence they are unable to pay On-Line payment for duty and taxes. Particularly the corporate sector does not even have access for On-Line Banking and they have to make payments through conventional method of submitting pay orders or cheques.
Corporate Sector who are willing to make e-payment for duty and taxes should have 24 / 7 module for facilitation of payments. In this regard it was decided by the SBP that in near future all such facilities will be provided to the corporate sectors. Few Bank like Standard Chartered, Samba Bank etc already providing net Banking to corporate sectors
It has been observed that while custom duties and taxes paid through E-Payment the acknowledgement of payment challan are delayed for 2 to 3 days.
Now the matter has been resolved, the acknowledgment payment challan will be generated on real time basis.
