The court has upheld the Tax Committee’s claim against Indigo-Tajikistan mobile operator providing its services under the Tcell brand, Nusratullo Davlatzoda, the head of the Tax Committee under the Government of Tajikistan, told reporters in Dushanbe on July 21.
“The lawsuit has been completed and by court decision the company should pay back 155.6 million somoni in tax debts. To-date, it has repaid 56.9 million somoni and the remaining 98.2 million somoni will be repaid until October 1 this year,” Davlatzoda said.
Tajik chief tax officer stressed that cases of huge cost of tax evasion had been revealed in other mobile phone operators as well.
“Thus, tax debts of the Tacom mobile operator, which provides its services under the Beeline brand, amount to 151.4 million somoni. The company had already repaid 109.6 million somoni, and the remaining 41.8 million somoni will be repaid within the next few months,”
Davlatzoda further noted that huge tax evasion had been revealed in the MegaFon-Tajikistan mobile operator – 183.5 million somoni.
“This issue is still under consideration. I think that an appropriate legal act will be adopted in the near future,” Davlatzoda said.
Tajikistan’s mobile phone companies first faced similar fines to these in 2014. That year, MegaFon-Tajikistan was fined 95 million somoni, although the company managed to argue through the courts to have that reduced to 20 million somoni. Beeline was pumped for 21.2 million, but paid up only 4.8 million somoni. But yet another company, Babilon Mobile, was unable to get off the hook and had to pay out a whopping 341 million somoni in installments.
The government several years ago imposed a 3 percent excise tax on communications service and then introduced an 18 percent sales tax on incoming and outgoing calls.
And as a result of a decision adopted earlier in January this year, mobile phone operators in Tajikistan have to increase the cost of outgoing calls to Russia by 20 percent, up to 1.20 somoni per minute beginning on January 20. Just a year ago, the cost of a call to Russia per minute was only 0.69 somoni.
Mobile phone companies have said that this additional cost had been incurred by the fact that calls are now rerouted through the Unified Electronic Communications Switching Center, a network gateway run by state-owned telecommunications company Tojiktelecom, which is in turn owned by the state communications agency. The gateway has been described by the authorities as aimed at “ensuring national and information security.”
