Online Subscription Price Calculator 2026-27

Netflix, Spotify, YouTube Premium, ChatGPT, Canva, Adobe, hosting and similar subscriptions are card transactions with a person outside Pakistan, so the bank collects section 236Y on each payment. Sindh's list covers software and IT services, including cloud-based content streaming; Punjab's names IT services such as web hosting but not content streaming. In the example the card tax is Rs 644 of the Rs 129,444 a year.

Provincial sales tax at the card

In Sindh, a bank or other entity the State Bank authorises to transfer money abroad collects Sindh sales tax on the gross amount remitted when a recipient based in Sindh pays a provider not resident in Pakistan: 3% on software or IT-based services, including cloud-based content streaming. A company on the sales tax Active Taxpayers' List (SRB's or FBR's) is excluded (Sindh Sales Tax Special Procedure (Tax on Specified Services) Rules 2023, rules 1(2) and 3, as amended by SRB Notification SRB-3-4/45/2025). In Punjab, banks and other financial institutions are collecting agents for Punjab sales tax on services bought through websites from a person with no place of business in Pakistan by persons in Punjab receiving them in the course of an economic activity: 5%, without input tax, on IT services, including web hosting (PRA Notification PRA.32-24/2022/561, as amended). The list does not name content streaming. Whether a purchase outside a business is in the course of an economic activity is not settled. Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Balochistan and Islamabad tax services from non-residents in the hands of the recipient, but no rule was found making a bank collect that tax at the card. Whether your bank applies the provincial tax to a particular purchase, and under which heading, is its decision on the rules above; your card statement shows it. Choose it here only if your bank takes it.

Where this stops

The Digital Presence Proceeds Tax Act 2025 charged tax on payments to foreign vendors for digitally ordered goods and services. S.R.O. 1366(I)/2025 of 30 July 2025 directs that the tax shall not apply to digitally ordered goods and services supplied from outside Pakistan, from 1 July 2025; the Act itself was not repealed. No digital presence tax is added. Section 152(1C): a bank remitting a fee for offshore digital services to a non-resident, on behalf of a resident, deducts tax from the gross amount at Division IV of Part I of the First Schedule (15% for such a fee; FBR's rates card prints 10%, and the card itself says the statute prevails). The definition in section 2(22B) names online advertising including digital advertising space, hosting websites, "digital or cyber space for websites", e-mails, online computing and the distribution of digital content, so on its text a payment for these is such a fee; Google's help page for Pakistan calls Google Ads one and says a customer may need to deposit the tax. Nothing in the Ordinance makes this and section 236Y alternatives. No source was found showing that banks deduct section 152(1C) on card payments, so this page adds none; if your bank does, your card statement shows it. Section 153(2A), with section 6A: 1% on digital payments and 2% on cash on delivery for goods or services ordered through locally operated e-commerce platforms (First Schedule Part I Division IVA; collection under Part III Division III para (3A)), collected by payment intermediaries and couriers from the amount payable to the seller. A provider abroad is not a locally operated platform, so it does not reach this purchase. For a payment you already know in rupees, the foreign card payment tax calculator works out the section 236Y tax alone.