Can You Pay PTA Tax in Instalments?

Team Oraan4 October 20263 min read

Legal status

In force

Ninth Schedule, added by Finance Act 2026

Available in DIRBS

No mechanism reported as at 4 October 2026

Deadline

30 June

End of the financial year of import

The government has legalised paying PTA tax in instalments. It has not built anything that lets you do it. Both halves of that sentence are true, and the gap between them is where most of the confusion lives.

What is actually in force

The Finance Act 2026 added a sub-clause to the conditions attached to the Ninth Schedule of the Sales Tax Act 1990. It appears in FBR’s own consolidated text of the Act, amended to 30 June 2026:

An individual liable to pay tax on imported mobile phone device through Device Identification, Registration and Blocking System of Pakistan Telecommunication Authority, may be allowed to pay tax in instalments as may be prescribed, subject to the condition that all the instalments shall be paid before the end of the financial year in which the import is made.

Two phrases carry all the weight. “May be allowed” makes it permissive rather than automatic. “As may be prescribed” means the rules governing it have to be written separately — and that is the step still missing.

What does not exist

FBR issued Circular No. 01 of 2026 on 11 September 2026. It restates the provision in a single paragraph and adds nothing to it: no number of instalments, no schedule, no procedure.

What has not followed is the mechanism. No rules prescribing it have been published, and no outlet has reported an instalment option going live in DIRBS. Registering a handset still produces a single Payment Slip ID for the full amount.

Three things the coverage gets wrong

It is not the whole bill

The clause sits in the Sales Tax Act and refers to sales tax. Regulatory duty, advance income tax and the handset levy are not mentioned. Sales tax is the biggest single piece on an expensive phone, but it is not all of it.

The clock is the financial year, not twelve months

Every instalment must be paid before the end of the financial year in which the phone was imported. Pakistan’s financial year ends on 30 June. Import in July and you would have close to a year; import in May and you would have about six weeks.

Fake notifications have already circulated

In July 2026 PTA publicly stated that a notification doing the rounds on social media, claiming DIRBS instalments were live, was fake and that it had issued no such directive. That was two months before the genuine circular.

What to do meanwhile

If the tax is the obstacle, the honest options are the ordinary ones: buy a handset that was launched officially in Pakistan, so the duties are already inside the retail price and nothing is owed on registration, or spread the cost of the purchase itself rather than the tax.

Our guide to every instalment route in Pakistan sets the published markups side by side, and our PTA tax calculator estimates the bill you would be spreading.

The quoted sub-clause is taken from the Sales Tax Act 1990 as published by FBR, amended to 30 June 2026, where it is marked as an insertion by the Finance Act 2026.

Circular No. 01 of 2026 is read from FBR’s own copy. That DIRBS has no instalment option rests on press reporting up to mid-September 2026 and on finding no report of a launch since; we did not run a registration to test it.

Sources

Sales Tax Act 1990, amended to 30 June 2026 — Ninth Schedule, conditions
FBR Circular No. 01 of 2026 — 11 September 2026
ProPakistani — FBR allows instalment payments of PTA tax
ProPakistani — PTA rejects fake notification on DIRBS instalments
pakera.pk — allowed by FBR, not live yet
FBR — Mobile Devices Regularization (DIRBS)

Common questions

Can I pay PTA tax in instalments right now?

No. The law permitting it is in force, but the system to use it has not been built. The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority runs the Device Identification, Registration and Blocking System, and as at early October 2026 no instalment option has been reported there and no date has been given for one. Until it does, registering a handset still means paying the full amount against a single Payment Slip ID.

What exactly did the law change?

The Finance Act 2026 inserted a new sub-clause into the conditions attached to the Ninth Schedule of the Sales Tax Act 1990. It says an individual liable to pay tax on an imported mobile phone through PTA's DIRBS may be allowed to pay that tax in instalments as may be prescribed, provided all instalments are paid before the end of the financial year in which the phone was imported. The words that matter are "may be allowed" and "as may be prescribed" — it is an enabling provision, not a working facility.

Does the instalment facility cover the whole PTA tax bill?

No, and this is widely misreported. The clause sits in the Sales Tax Act and refers to sales tax. PTA registration also carries regulatory duty, advance income tax and the mobile handset levy, and none of those are mentioned. On an expensive handset sales tax is the largest single component, so the facility would still help — but it would not split the whole bill.

I saw a notification saying instalments are available. Is it genuine?

Check it carefully. In July 2026 PTA publicly stated that a notification circulating on social media, claiming device taxes could be paid in instalments through DIRBS, was fake and that it had issued no such directive. A genuine change came later and separately, through the Finance Act and an FBR circular, and even that has not produced a working facility. Treat any screenshot promising instalments as unverified until DIRBS itself shows the option.

How many instalments would there be?

Unspecified. The law says instalments may be allowed "as may be prescribed", and the prescribing has not happened. The number of instalments, whether any markup or fee applies, whether your handset is unblocked after the first payment or only after the last, and what happens if you miss one are all undefined. Those details matter enormously in practice, and none of them exist yet.