Sri Lanka: A bad tax made technology neutral, finally


Posted on November 6, 2008  /  1 Comments

It is reported that the one million or so customers of Sri Lanka Telecom who have wireline connections can now look forward to paying the same amount in taxes as the ten million or so customers (mobile and fixed) who connect wirelessly (across GSM and CDMA platforms). We have opposed telecom specific taxes; but even more, we have opposed discrimination between different technologies. It takes some time for the people in Treasury to get it, but at least they got it after more than a year.

If they got it earlier, there would have been no need to change the description in the phone bills from mobile subscriber levy to telephone subscriber levy.

Hopefully this will also end the anomaly of taxing the same broadband service differently.

Of course, this is not the only telecom relevant item in the Budget. More as we get the news.

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