Section 153 of Pakistan's Income Tax Ordinance requires the payer to withhold tax at source when paying for services — including creator work — and to deposit it against your CNIC. That withheld amount is not a fee you have lost; it is tax already paid on your behalf, which you claim as a credit when you file. The paperwork that proves it is the withholding statement.
The one sentence that clears up most of the confusion
Money withheld under §153 has not disappeared and it is not a platform charge. It has been paid to the FBR in your name, against your CNIC, before the balance reached you. When you file your annual return, that amount is credited against whatever you owe. If your total liability for the year is lower than what was withheld, the difference is refundable.
This matters because the most common reaction to a first payment with tax withheld is that a mysterious deduction has appeared. It has not. What has appeared is a prepayment on a bill you were always going to receive, and it is only bad news if you never file, in which case you have paid tax and claimed none of the credit.
Filer status is where the real money is
The withholding rate that applies to you depends on whether you are on the Active Taxpayers List. Non-filers are withheld at a materially higher rate — the gap is large enough that for a working creator, getting onto the ATL usually pays for the accountant several times over in the first year.
Getting on the list is not the ordeal it is assumed to be. It requires an NTN, a filed return, and the return being processed. Creators who have never filed often assume there is a penalty waiting for them; in the ordinary case of someone whose income was already being withheld at source, filing is what recovers money rather than costing it.
What a withholding statement is, and why you want one
The payer files periodic statements listing who they paid, how much, and how much tax they withheld and deposited. Your claim to the tax credit rests on those deposits being traceable to you. If a brand paid you in cash, withheld nothing and filed nothing, you have income with no corresponding credit and no paper trail — which is a worse position at filing time than having been withheld against properly.
Being paid through Shaheeno does not change this. Shaheeno does not withhold or deposit tax on your behalf and issues no withholding statements, so no tax is deducted from what reaches your wallet and the filing is yours to handle. Keep your own record of every payment rather than depending on whether a particular brand's finance team follows the rules that month.
What Shaheeno's income summary covers
The income summary in your creator dashboard pulls together the platform-side figures for the tax year (1 July to 30 June): gross earnings from released orders, Shaheeno's commission, and the filing deadline, and your earnings page exports every transaction as a CSV. Its withholding line is only an estimate at a flat 10% §153 filer rate — Shaheeno has not deducted or deposited that tax — so treat it as a planning figure to take to an accountant, not a statement of tax paid.
What it cannot cover is income you earned elsewhere. Direct brand deals settled off-platform, AdSense, TikTok's creator fund and any local sponsorship paid to you privately are all part of the same return and none of them appear in this summary. The summary is one input to your filing, not the filing itself.
A necessary caveat
This article is written to be accurate as a general explanation. It is not tax advice for your situation, rates and thresholds change with each Finance Act, and the treatment of creator income continues to develop. Before you make a decision with real money attached, talk to someone who can look at your actual numbers.
Hire Pakistani creators with escrow on every deal
Brief a campaign, compare real PKR rate cards, and release payment only when the work is approved.
Find creators