Why a page like this exists
Most Pakistani tax content is written from other Pakistani tax content. A figure appears in a news story, gets copied into a blog post, gets copied into a calculator, and three years later it is still circulating with nobody able to say which line of which statute it came from. When the underlying law changes, none of those copies change with it.
A concrete example from 2026. Widely-syndicated tech coverage reported that the mobile handset levy on US$101–200 phones had been cut to Rs. 20. Calculators across the Pakistani web adopted that number. The gazetted figure in Finance Act 2026 s.7 is Rs. 200 — a factor of ten. Anyone who had opened the gazette instead of the article would have caught it in a minute.
So the rule on this site is that a rate does not get published unless it has a cited row traceable to something below. If a number cannot be traced, the page says so instead of guessing. How that works in practice, including what it fails to catch, is on the how we verify rates page.
The documents
Finance Act 2026
Gazette of Pakistan, EXTRA., 26 June 2026 — 256 pages, 42 MB. The amending act that produced FY2026-27 rates. Effective 1 July 2026.
What it governs: Every change that took effect on 1 July 2026, including s.7 (mobile handset levy) and the Ninth Schedule instalment provision at p. 554.
Income Tax Ordinance 2001
As amended up to 30 June 2026. The consolidated statute — a Finance Act only amends this; it does not replace it.
What it governs: Income tax generally. First Schedule Part II (second proviso) sets §148 tax on imported phones; Tenth Schedule Rule 1 is where the non-ATL doubling rule actually lives.
Sales Tax Act 1990
As amended up to 30 June 2026. The Ninth Schedule (pp. 215–217) is the mobile-phone table.
What it governs: Sales tax on phone imports — 18% ad valorem up to US$500, 25% above. Table-II was substituted by the Finance Act 2024, superseding the old rupee table with its separate CNIC and passport columns. Any calculator still showing those columns is running law that was superseded in FY2024-25.
SRO 1064(I)/2026
Customs, 30 June 2026. Supersedes SRO 1152(I)/2025. Mobile rows are S.Nos 548–555.
What it governs: Regulatory duty on imports from 1 July 2026 — Rs. 240 to Rs. 17,600 per set by C&F value, PCT 8517.1390 / 8517.1419.
FBR Withholding Income Tax Rate Card
Updated to 30 June 2026 per the Finance Act 2026. FBR's own consolidated summary.
What it governs: All withholding sections — 149, 150, 151, 153, 154, 154A, 155, 156, 231AB, 236C, 236K, 236Y. Authoritative, but a summary: it states that the original statute always prevails.
Finance Act 2018 (s.10) and Finance Act 2022 (s.7)
Still-operative provisions from earlier years. The handset levy was created by the 2018 Act and its table substituted wholesale by the 2022 Act.
What it governs: Mobile handset levy — a separate federal levy on top of duty, sales tax and income tax. Finance Act 2026 s.7 changed only one row of it.
PTA DIRBS official FAQs
Pakistan Telecommunication Authority. Administrative practice, not statute — but it is the operator of the registration system.
What it governs: Device registration procedure: the 60-day arrival window, the 120-day temporary facility, the five-devices-per-year cap, and the withdrawal of the free baggage exemption on 30 June 2019.
One structural point that trips people up: a Finance Act is an amending act. It does not contain the law, it edits the law. To know what a rate is today you need the consolidated Ordinance or Act as amended, not the Finance Act alone — which is why both appear above.
What is deliberately not a source
During research, a large number of Pakistani tax sites and calculators were read. Almost none are used as sources, and several were found actively wrong — a cluster of them were quoting 15%/30% or 15%/35% on bank profit under §151, contradicting both FBR's own rate card and PwC, apparently by recycling pre-2025 content. Others were still showing the CNIC-versus-passport sales-tax table that stopped existing in FY2024-25.
Those sites are only ever used to corroborate a figure already established by a primary document — never as the basis for one. The same applies to news reporting, which is how the Rs. 20 error spread.
We also do not claim to have read what we have not read. Big-4 and ICAP memos (KPMG, EY, Deloitte, Crowe) are not among our sources; an earlier draft of our internal notes listed them on the strength of search snippets alone, which was an overstatement and was removed.
Where the sourcing is still incomplete
Stated plainly, because a source list that claims completeness is the same failure mode in a different coat:
| Gap | Status |
|---|---|
| Finance Act 2026 gazette read end-to-end | No — text-searched for the mobile-phone provisions. Income tax slabs and withholding rows still rest on FBR's rate card. |
| Non-ATL doubling at individual device registration | Unresolved. The statute sets the doubling; whether PTA/DIRBS applies it to an individual registering one phone is collection practice the statute does not answer. |
| Customs valuation ruling for used phones | VR 2076/2026 (21 Apr 2026) appears to be current, but has not been confirmed against the rulings index. |
| Provincial notifications (vehicle token tax) | Partially verified. Some rates rest on provincial Excise & Taxation notifications rather than a federal source, and say so on the page. |
| USD/PKR conversion basis | Hardcoded, labelled with its as-of date. Regulatory duty, income tax and the levy are fixed rupee amounts, so it affects only the ad valorem sales tax. |
How to check a rate yourself
- Start with FBR's rate card for anything withholding-related. It is a PDF, it is searchable, and it is FBR's own document. Find your section number.
- Check whether the section was touched by the current Finance Act. Open the gazette and search for the section number. If it appears, the rate card should already reflect it — if the two disagree, the statute wins.
- For anything scheduled, go to the schedule. Rates for imports, mobile phones, and non-filer penalties live in the First, Ninth and Tenth Schedules, not in the main body of the Act.
- Watch the band boundaries. Statutory tables sometimes print literal gaps — the handset levy jumps from “up to 100” to “above 101”. Read them as printed before assuming a typo, and note that different instruments band the same values differently: SRO 1064(I)/2026 dropped a US$500–700 split that the levy still keeps.
- Distrust any figure with no citation — including ours. If a page here states a rate without pointing at a document, treat that as a defect and tell us.
Related
See how we verify rates for the process itself, rate corrections for every figure we have had to fix and why, and the disclaimer for the limits of using any of this.