FBR Finally Unlocks PTA Tax Installments, But Buyers Must Wait

ISLAMABAD: Two months after the government first promised relief, the Federal Board of Revenue has switched on an instalment facility for sales tax on imported mobile phones buyers no longer have to clear the entire bill in one shot.

Circular No. 1 of 2026, dated September 11, is what makes it official. It inserts a new provision into the Ninth Schedule of the Sales Tax Act, 1990, though the legal groundwork actually goes back further, to the Finance Act, 2026. The FBR simply sat on it for weeks importers kept paying the full amount upfront, relief announced but unusable.

Under the new provision, buyers can now split their sales tax liability into instalments instead of clearing it in one payment at the time of import. The FBR has attached one firm condition: every instalment must be settled before the financial year in which the phone entered Pakistan comes to a close. Miss that window, and the flexibility disappears.

How PTA Tax Installments Will Work on Imported Phones

The facility runs through the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority's Device Identification, Registration and Blocking System, better known as DIRBS the same platform that has controlled phone registration in Pakistan since December 2018. But the FBR's move only tells half the story. The PTA still has to build the actual payment mechanism inside DIRBS before anyone can use this facility in practice, and no timeline for that rollout has been announced yet.

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DIRBS itself exists to catch unregistered devices and block phones that skip the tax net. The government tightened the net further in July 2019, when it withdrew the duty-free allowance that had let travellers bring in phones from abroad without paying anything. Since that withdrawal, anyone importing a phone into Pakistan traveller or otherwise has had to clear duties and taxes before the device gets registered for use on local networks.

That upfront cost has weighed heaviest on individuals rather than large retailers, who often have more room to absorb tax payments across their books. Tens of thousands of rupees that's what the sales tax on a single imported phone can run to, and until now, buyers had to pay it in full before the device even switched on. The bill doesn't shrink under the new rule. It just stops arriving all at once.

For now, this is a legal pathway, not a working one. The PTA has to finish building the payment mechanism on the DIRBS side before instalments can actually flow. Until it does, the FBR's circular stays exactly what it is on paper: a promise, not yet a tool.