Fact-check: How many taxes are being added to your electricity bill in Punjab?

As protests against a massive increase in the price of electricity in Pakistan grow, social media users claim that electricity charges are high as power companies are levying 19 additional taxes, on top of the generation cost of electricity, in the power bills of domestic subscribers.

The claim is misleading. While there are additional tariffs, some of which are unrelated to electricity consumption, the number of taxes is four, not 19.

Claim

On August 27, an X user posted that domestic consumers have received inflated power bills because they have to pay 19 different taxes in addition to the cost of the electricity.

The user then continued to list down the alleged 19 taxes, including output power, television fee, general sales tax, income tax, surplus tax, extra tax, further tax, Neelum-Jhelum surcharge, sales tax, sales tax fuel price adjustment, amongst others.

The post has been reposted 1,000 times and liked over 1,000 times, to date.

The identical text was shared on Facebook too.

Fact

The number of taxes, that domestic consumers must pay, has been misrepresented online, confirm officials from the Ministry of Energy, the National Electric Power Regulatory Authority (NEPRA) and the Power Information Technology Company (PITC).

Officials explain that the billing cycle is made up of the cost of electricity and four categories of taxes, not 19 as social media users have claimed.

The cost of electricity includes the quarterly tariff adjustment, fuel price adjustment and financial surcharge, while the four taxes levied are the general sales tax (GST), income tax and a fee for the state-owned PTV, which is collected by the federal government, while the electricity duty is charged by the respective provinces.

Furthermore, domestic or residential consumers are divided into three slabs – lifeline, protected and unprotected, they added.

Lifeline consumers have a power consumption of less than 100 units per month, in the last 12 months. Protected users consume less than 200 units per month, consistently for the last six months, and any consumption over 200 units per month is classified as unprotected consumers.

Below is an estimate of how the price of state electricity was determined in Punjab for the month of July (tariffs vary per province):

With additional reporting by Muhammad Binyameen Iqbal.

Graphics by Afreen Mirza.

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