Illegality’ of Point-of-Sale fee throws up questions for FBR

A nationwide nominal Rs1 Point-of-Sale (PoS) service fee on each sale invoice collected by hundreds of thousands of tier-1 retailers translates into tens of billions of rupees annually and is allegedly misappropriated by tax officials. This fee, hardly noticed by customers, was imposed by the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) about four years ago. At the time of its imposition in August 2021, it was announced that the amount so collected would be spent on promoting documentation, including rewards to customers through lucky draws. Initially, for a few months, there were actually some lucky customers who earned cash prices. The prize scheme was suspended shortly without explanation, but fee collection continues even today and is being consumed by Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) officers without any audit or accountability.