The News and The Dawn reported earlier today about what appeared to be an “excellence” of the FBR (Federal Board of Revenue) to unearth over Rs. 60 billion “untaxed” Payoneer payments to over 75 thousand individuals in Pakistan via 28 Pakistani banks, in less than 2.5 years.
At first glance, the statement above actually seems pretty much impressive about the country’s top tax driver. This, in reality, proves the incompetence of the authority for not knowing that Payoneer, the global payment services provider, has been transferring money to freelancers in Pakistan for over a decade.
Without any ifs and buts, let it be clear that Payoneer uses proper banking channels to transfer foreign payments in Pakistan. That’s what the freelancer community already knows as there is no other way for the service exporters in the country to receive payments. Recently JazzCash has officially integrated with Payoneer to receive payments for its customers. Faisal Bank, on the other hand, also provides similar integration to directly link with a Payoneer account.
In addition to these local integrations, Payoneer offers to add almost every Pakistani bank account as a withdrawal option. In short, you can not receive even a penny from Payoneer without any proper banking channel involved except for a Payoneer debit card.
The company, however, has already responded to FBR’s excellence with the exact same thing. The company noted, in the statement, that it ensures the foreign currency is transferred to the freelancers in Pakistan through “formal banking channels.”
Apart from this excellence of FBR, the debate also includes whether this freelancer community is even liable to pay taxes? Especially when they have been working online with no support from the government? Remember when the Pakistani banks won’t even open accounts for these freelancers as they didn’t recognize their source of income? Not until now, thanks to a few offering bank accounts to freelancers.
But the thing to consider is that whether the government is really interested in increased foreign remittances or not. Because Pakistan’s freelancer community was among the top five countries in 2019 when they had no guarantee of receiving payments in the country, yet they were used to use friends’ and family’s bank accounts.
This is high time to make things easy for the people. Instead of burdening the hard workers while they try to earn through legal and proper channels, facilitate them. Let me remind the government that it’s one of the major goals of it to bring as much foreign remittance as possible. So they need to go slow on freelancers. Disturbing the companies which transfer money in Pakistan through proper banking channels – such as Payoneer in this case, will not hurt them but the local freelancer community.
Instead of putting up a sensational story to portray the company doing a sort of criminal act, FBR should have contacted them in a professional way to discuss legal matters. Sure a company must have local offices with no denying.
