Iraqi state cuts 1% of mobile companies' tax due

Shafaq News/ A member of the Parliamentary Legal Committee, Hussein Al-Uqabi, revealed that the tax withheld from mobile phone companies does not exceed 1% of the financial entitlements they owe.

Al-Uqabi said in a press conference, "The Communications Statistics Report for the year 2018 issued by the Directorate of Transportation and Communications Statistics, showed that the number of mobile phone lines for companies operating in Iraq reached 39 million, while the mobile Internet service lines for the same companies were 15 million."

"By calculating the total minimum revenue generated, if the monthly rate of exchange for the telephone line is ten dollars, the total revenue generated annually is 6.7 trillion dinars."

Al-Uqabi added, "If every four people subscribed to one Internet service line, the average monthly price is 30,000 dinars, which is low considering that the individual subscription to the Internet service is not counted, the total revenues generated annually amount to 1.3 trillion dinars."

He noted, "By reviewing the tax values table realized for mobile phone companies, which in some years amounted to 1% or 2%, what is deducted is only 80 billion dinars only from the total revenues of eight trillion dinars."

He pointed out that by reviewing the profit equation divided between the state and those companies, which gives the state a profit rate of only 18%, equivalent to 1.4 trillion dinars, then ending the licensing contracts for these companies and assign a national company to manage the telecommunications sector, which will save at least more than six trillion dinars annually.

"Why insist on keeping the management of this important and active sector in maximizing the state's non-oil revenues in the hands of companies that are supported and in agreement with influential politicians, and depriving the Iraqi people of these huge revenues?"

Al-Uqabi called the council of representatives, the council of ministers, and the responsible and conscious people to take a clear stance in order to protect the national wealth and liberate it from those who monopolized it.