Wise tax in Pakistan: what a freelancer owes on Wise receipts
Money clients send you through Wise for work you export is taxable income in Pakistan, and for IT or IT-enabled services it is normally taxed under section 154A at 1%, or 0.25% with PSEB. The wrinkle with Wise is the conversion: your statement carries its own exchange rate, and your return does not use it.
Section 154A, at 1% or 0.25%
Export proceeds for IT and IT-enabled services fall under section 154A of the Income Tax Ordinance. The bank deducts the tax when the remittance is credited and that deduction is final, so there is nothing further to pay on that income. The rate is 1%, or 0.25% with a live PSEB registration. You still file a return either way.
Tax year 2026 runs from 1 July 2025 to 30 June 2026, and the deadline is 30 September 2026. On Rs 1,800,000 of Wise receipts in that year:
| treatment | tax for the year |
|---|---|
| s.154A final tax at 1% | Rs 18,000 |
| s.154A final tax at 0.25%, PSEB registered | Rs 4,500 |
| normal slabs, before business expenses | Rs 230,000 |
The normal regime charges nothing on the first Rs 600,000 and then rises in bands, and it does allow business expenses, so treat the last row as a ceiling. FilerKaro computes both and picks the cheaper one for you.
Wise is the road, not the reason
Section 154A attaches to the work, not to the transfer service. Software development, web and mobile development, design, QA, DevOps, data work, technical writing, IT support, call-centre and back-office services invoiced to foreign clients are exports of IT or IT-enabled services, and that is what the section covers. Anything else your Wise account received belongs in your normal income. The section also assumes you are resident in Pakistan for the year, which usually means 183 days or more in the country.
The bank credit is what you can prove
Wise does not deduct Pakistani tax. The 154A deduction is made by the Pakistani bank that credits your inward remittance, and the evidence is the Proceeds Realisation Certificate and tax deduction certificate that bank issues on request. That certificate is what you credit against your liability on the return, so a transfer that reached a Pakistani bank account is worth more to you at filing time than one that stopped short of it.
FilerKaro flags any month that has income but no certificate attached, because without it the credit cannot be claimed and that amount becomes payable. There is also a separate 100% credit under section 65F that turns on at least 80% of export proceeds coming through banking channels, but its status past June 2026 was unconfirmed when these rules were written, so FilerKaro leaves it out of the TY2026 arithmetic.
How to export your Wise statement
Open your Wise statement for the tax year, 1 July 2025 to 30 June 2026, and export it as CSV. FilerKaro reads the header row rather than the file name, so what matters is which columns are present:
| column in the statement | what FilerKaro does with it |
|---|---|
| Date | the receipt date, which picks the exchange rate |
| Direction | money going out is flagged, not counted as income |
| Source currency | anything but USD is held back for you to confirm |
| Source amount | gross receipt for the row |
| Total charges | Wise's fee, subtracted to give the net |
| Exchange rate | read, but not used to value your return |
The Direction column matters more than it looks. A Wise statement mixes money in with money out, and payments you sent are not income. Those rows are held back rather than silently added to your receipts.
Wise's rate is not the rate your return uses
Your return values each receipt at the State Bank rate for its own date: the nearest published rate on or before the day the money came in. Wise quotes its own mid-market rate on every transfer, and that number is the price of the conversion, not the figure your return is built on. Something received in August 2025 converts at the August 2025 State Bank rate even though you file in September 2026.
Wise transfers into Pakistan often land already converted, so the statement shows a target currency and a target amount in rupees. When a row is built that way, the dollar figure is derived rather than read straight off the file, and FilerKaro records it at lower confidence so you can see which lines are approximate before they reach IRIS. The fee comes off first: the figure that goes into the 154A line is what actually landed.
Two things Wise users ask first
- Is Wise income taxable in Pakistan?
- Yes. Money clients send you through Wise for work you export is taxable income in Pakistan. For IT or IT-enabled services it is normally taxed under section 154A at 1% of the receipts, or 0.25% if you are PSEB registered, and a return is still required.
- Does Wise report to FBR?
- Payoneer and Wise now report transactions to FBR, so your inward remittances are visible. A return that matches your bank record is the cheapest insurance you can buy.
Upload that same export to FilerKaro
The statement you just exported from Wise is the file FilerKaro reads. It separates money in from money out, converts every receipt at the State Bank rate for its date, flags anything approximate, compares 154A against normal slabs, and names the tab, the field and the figure to type into IRIS. The estimate is free. The filing pack is Rs 2,500.