Rs195. That is the figure Pakistan’s Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) now assumes a YouTuber earns for every 1,000 views, and it sits at the heart of Pakistan’s creator tax, the special procedure for “remunerative social media content” that the board notified in the final week of September. Under the rules, a creator’s taxable remuneration is whichever is higher: what the platforms actually paid, or Rs195 (about $0.70) multiplied by every thousand views.
The rules are now in force, and the pushback has started. On 4 October, digital artists, content creators and influencers told The Express Tribune that taxing creators largely on gross receipts and a fixed benchmark ignores how unevenly the work actually pays, and asked the government to review the regime.
How the Rs195 Benchmark Turns Views Into Income
The mechanism at the centre of Pakistan’s creator tax is simple arithmetic. According to Digital Rights Monitor, which went through the notifications line by line, benchmark remuneration equals the revenue per mille (RPM) multiplied by total views and divided by 1,000. With RPM fixed at Rs195, a video that draws 100,000 views is treated as having earned Rs19,500. A channel that reaches one million views in a period is treated as having earned Rs195,000.
Creators can then deduct expenses, but only up to 30% of total revenue. That ceiling sets a floor: on the one-million-view example, the most a creator can claim is Rs58,500, which leaves at least Rs136,500 as taxable income before rates are applied. Anyone who believes their real earnings were lower than the benchmark can say so, but they must provide evidence that satisfies the tax commissioner. The burden of proof, in other words, sits with the creator rather than with the board.
The paperwork follows the same pattern for residents and non-residents. Income from social media content has to be paid as advance tax every quarter and declared in a designated section of the annual income tax return, and commissioners are empowered to rectify under-declared income and recover the difference. Dawn noted that the government had already introduced a 5% tax rate on social media content earnings in the budget, and that under the new rules the higher of the assessed income or the remuneration a person receives from their content, “whether in cash or kind”, is treated as taxable income.
The legal plumbing runs across three instruments. SRO 1640(I)/2026 designates the sector under section 99C of the Income Tax Ordinance, SRO 1641(I)/2026 sets out the procedure for residents, and SRO 1642(I)/2026 covers non-residents. The definitions are deliberately wide. A social media platform is any internet service whose economic value comes from user participation, network effects and the monetisation of engagement or data, which covers every platform the FBR’s withholding regime names: YouTube, Facebook, Instagram and TikTok.
Where the Benchmark Sits Against Real Payouts
The trouble, creators argue, is not the principle of paying tax. It is where the benchmark sits. The same Express Tribune report collected local estimates of what advertising actually pays in Pakistan: roughly Rs5,000 to Rs20,000 for 100,000 monthly views, and Rs50,000 to Rs200,000 or more for a million views, depending on the niche and on where the audience lives.
Set the benchmark against those ranges and the issue is plain. Rs19,500 per 100,000 views sits at the very top of the first band. Rs195,000 per million views sits near the top of the second. A creator whose audience sits in lower-paying advertising markets, or in a niche advertisers value less, can earn a fraction of the assumed figure and still be assessed on the full amount unless the paperwork proves otherwise.
The creators’ own case rests on that unevenness. Earnings from platforms, they told the paper, depend on audience location, advertising demand, platform policies, production costs and the type of content, not only on views and subscribers. The report also noted that there is no reliable national average for creators in Pakistan because earnings are heavily skewed and mostly unreported, and that most creators earn little or nothing at all.
Where money does flow, it often comes from brand deals rather than advertising. In 2026 rate guides cited by the paper, a nano creator with fewer than 10,000 followers may charge roughly Rs500 to Rs25,000 per post, a micro creator with 10,000 to 100,000 followers about Rs5,000 to Rs150,000, and larger accounts several hundred thousand rupees to more than Rs1 million. Salaried content roles in Karachi showed a median of about Rs60,000 a month. Because the notification counts remuneration “in cash or kind”, sponsored products and paid trips fall inside the net too.
Overseas Creators With Pakistani Audiences Are Covered
The second half of the package reaches beyond Pakistan’s borders. A non-resident creator falls into the regime once they reach more than 50,000 users in Pakistan in a tax year, or 12,250 in a single quarter. Income earned from interaction with those users is then treated as Pakistan-source income, with the same RPM calculation, the same 30% expense cap and the same quarterly filing.
The idea is not new. In April the FBR circulated draft amendments that set out the same thresholds, as Business Recorder reported at the time, explaining that an overseas account holder above those thresholds would be treated as having a significant economic presence in Pakistan. A tax expert quoted in that report explained that the board would assume a YouTuber earns about Rs195 for every 1,000 views as the base for calculating taxable income, especially where exact earnings were not available. The final notification kept that number, and anyone who wants to declare less must back the lower figure with evidence.
For Pakistani creators who live abroad but film for viewers back home, that matters. Their audience, rather than their address, now decides whether they owe Pakistani tax on part of their channel income, and they too are expected to pay quarterly and declare the income in the special section of the return.
Why the 30% Expense Cap Is the Sticking Point
The sharpest criticism is aimed at the expense ceiling. Dr Noman Ahmed Said, chief executive of SI Global Solutions, told The Express Tribune that creators should contribute to the tax base, but that the system should recognise their production costs and irregular income. Withholding on platform receipts, he said, could be substantial for creators operating on thin margins, and he called for the 30% cap to be reconsidered.
“Pakistan should recognise documented business costs, simplify compliance and consider targeted relief for emerging creators,” he said. He warned that an excessive burden could hit investment, employment and the foreign exchange the digital economy brings in, and then made a narrower point that goes to the heart of the policy: “However, neither the nationwide tax revenue gain nor the potential economic loss can responsibly be quantified without reliable sector data. FBR should consult creators and other stakeholders and publish an impact assessment.”
The production side explains why the cap pinches. A creator filming regularly pays for cameras, lighting, editing software, data and travel, and many work with editors or small teams. For a channel whose real costs run above 30% of revenue, the cap means paying tax on money that was spent making the videos in the first place.
Artists Warn About AI and Thin Margins
The music and culture side of the industry has its own worries. Sher Muhammad, known as Sher Khumber, a music-industry entrepreneur and digital rights specialist, said taxation should not become a barrier to an industry that is still building audiences abroad. He pointed to artificial intelligence as a new pressure on artists’ revenue, particularly without comprehensive digital-rights protection, and argued that additional tax could squeeze earnings further.
“Pakistani cultural content, including poetry and music, is receiving appreciation worldwide through social-media platforms. However, many talented artists do not have the technical expertise or resources required to optimise the monetisation of their content,” he said. His proposal was a lighter regime that would let artists invest in digital studios to promote local music on social and video platforms.
Banks, Withholding and a Lifestyle Monitoring Cell
Collection does not depend on creators volunteering. Under section 154B of the Income Tax Ordinance, banks and non-banking financial institutions are required to deduct tax when revenues from social media platforms are credited or received, so the money is caught when it lands in a Pakistani account. The FBR has described the measure as part of bringing digital income into the formal tax system.
Enforcement has a second layer. According to The Express Tribune, the FBR has set up a Lifestyle Monitoring Cell that uses artificial intelligence and social media intelligence to look for gaps between publicly visible lifestyles and declared income and assets. Dawn reported that tax officials have also begun identifying high-earning social media accounts with millions of followers that have stayed outside the tax net. For creators whose work is public by definition, that is a pointed development: the content itself can become evidence.
What Creators Are Asking the FBR to Change
The requests are specific: recognise documented costs instead of capping them at 30%, simplify compliance, offer targeted relief for emerging creators, consult before revising the regime and publish an impact assessment. Nothing in the rules prevents the board from changing the benchmark, since the rules describe Rs195 as subject to revision, and that clause leaves room for the change creators are asking for.
The debate also fits a wider pattern in the creator economy, where a small group captures most of the money while the long tail earns little. The same concentration showed up in brand spending when the creator economy’s top 10 took 62% of brand payments. A benchmark built around a healthy mid-sized channel lands very differently on the many creators who sit well below it.
For now, Pakistan’s creator tax is in force, quarterly advance payments are part of every monetised creator’s calendar, and the burden of showing that a channel earned less than Rs195 per 1,000 views rests with the creator. Whether the FBR revisits the benchmark or the 30% ceiling will decide whether the measure widens the tax base or simply pushes smaller creators back into the informal economy the rules were written to end.
