Kumar Mangalam Birla and Mukesh Ambani
When no changes were made in the old income tax regime in this year’s budget, a large number of taxpayers who had adopted this regime wondered if their tax burden would ever reduce. Not only the common man is troubled by this burden of different types of taxes, but many big industrialists of the country like Mukesh Ambani, Sunil Bharti Mittal and Kumar Mangalam Birla are also troubled by it. That is why in this one case they say that ‘they will not be able to pay tax’.
In fact, the country’s three major telecom companies Bharti Airtel, Vodafone Idea and Reliance Jio say that they are not able to bear the business burden of increased custom duty on printed circuit board assembly.
Nokia, Samsung and Ericsson shoulder the burden
Reliance Jio, Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Idea have asked 4G and 5G network gear makers like Nokia, Ericsson and Samsung to bear the burden of the increased 5 percent basic custom duty on printed circuit boards. They are not in a position to pay this amount.
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ET has quoted sources familiar with the matter as saying that these companies argue that they are expanding their 4G and 5G networks. Not only this, they have not yet monetized their 5G network. Nor have they started earning money from it. Therefore, they are not in a position to pay the increased duty.
The benefit of expensive tariff plan will also be available late
All the telecom companies of the country have recently increased their tariff plans by 11 to 25 percent. The companies say that the benefit of this tariff hike will reach them only by October-December. Therefore, they want the global vendors providing network gear to bear the burden of the increased tax themselves.
This request is being made by the companies to the global vendors at a time when Bharti Airtel and Reliance Jio are going to buy network gear worth around two billion dollars for the Phase-2 expansion of 5G.
Reliance Jio is the company of industrialist Mukesh Ambani. While Airtel is owned by industrialists like Sunil Bharti Mittal and Vodafone Idea is owned by Kumar Mangalam Birla.
