Customs Preventive directed to recover Rs 21.848m evaded taxes from M/s Warid Telecom

Customs Preventive directed to recover Rs 21.848m evaded taxes from M/s Warid Telecom

KARACHI: The Customs Collectorate of Preventive has been asked to recover Rs 21.848 million evaded duty and taxes from M/s Warid Telecom (Private) Limited, it is learnt here. 

According to sources, the scrutiny of import data relating to telecommunication companies revealed that M/s Warid Telecom had imported Cisco ASR 5000 Multimedia Core Platform via Air Freight Unit, Customs Collectorate Preventive Karachi, by mis-declaring the goods as computer products and availed the facility of Green Channel under PCT Heading 8471.5000 attracting customs duty at 1 percent whereas ASR 5000 multimedia core platform was found to work on mobile broadband network that can handle bandwidth intense, real time multimedia service such a voices, videos and TV to migrate to 4G technologies and is correctly classifiable under PCT Heading 8517.6290 chargeable to customs duty at 20 percent. Thus the appellant was found to have committed mis-declaration of the classification and evaded payment of Customs Duty amounting to Rs 16,890,225, sales tax Rs 2,871,343 and withholding tax Rs 1,086,888.

Accordingly, a show cause notice was served upon the appellant on 29.6.2015 and the case was adjudicated vide the impugned Order in Original No 173/2015.

Further, the appellant had failed to deny the impugned goods are not transmission apparatus. Having considered all the aspects of classification as reflected in the record we conclude that the impugned Order holds substance as goods are most appropriately classifiable under PCT 8517.6290 and not in the PCT Heading 8417.5000 wrongly claimed for obvious reasons of avoiding due rate and amount of duty/taxes. Therefore, the appeal having no merit is hereby dismissed and the impugned order is upheld as proper and lawful. Judgement passed and announced accordingly.

According to sources, the Customs Appellate Tribunal-III Karachi headed by Chairman/Member Judicial Justice (retd) Malik Mazoor Hussain and Member Technical-I Karachi Zulfikar A Kazmi has dismissed the appeal of the respondent vide Customs Appeal No K-1822 and K-1823 of 2015 dated 6.6.2017.

Source: CustomToday