Madiha Yaqoob
Since April 2026, Pakistani freelancers receiving export payments below USD 25,000 no longer have their bank collect Form “R” details for those individual transactions. The State Bank of Pakistan raised the Form “R” and Inward Remittance Voucher threshold from above USD 10,000 to above USD 25,000 through EPD Circular Letter No. 07 of 2026, issued on 6 April 2026. This is a bank reporting change rather than a tax exemption, and it leaves your FBR obligations and your Proceeds Realisation Certificate requirements exactly where they were.
That distinction matters, because the change was reported in much of the press as freelancers being exempted from declaring export proceeds. Read quickly, that sounds like a personal filing duty vanished. Form “R” was never a form a freelancer filed with the government directly.
What the circular actually changed
The State Bank revised the formats of three prescribed forms in the Foreign Exchange Manual at the same time: Form “M” (Appendix V-7), used for outward remittances, Form “R” (Appendix V-121), used for inward remittances, and the Inward Remittance Voucher (Appendix V-122). The stated purpose was to align these forms with current regulatory reporting requirements and remove redundancies.
The threshold change applies to Form “R” and the IRV. Both moved to USD 25,000 or the equivalent in other currencies, with immediate effect. The State Bank’s press statement of the same date framed the higher threshold as a convenience measure for beneficiaries, alongside a broader set of changes to export realisation procedures and documentation standards.
Form R is a bank form, not a freelancer filing
This is the part most summaries skip. Under Chapter 22 of the Foreign Exchange Manual, Authorized Dealers, meaning your commercial bank, are required to report foreign exchange transaction data to the State Bank’s Statistics and Data Services Department through the International Transaction Reporting System. Form “R” is one of the instruments through which a bank captures the details it needs for that report, including information it collects from you.
So when the threshold rises, what changes is the point at which your bank has to gather that detailed information set from you. The bank still reports the transaction. Your money still arrives through the same channel. What thins out is the paperwork the bank pushes back onto you for routine receipts.
The circular also instructs Authorized Dealers to strictly observe the split of responsibility for supplying information across Appendices V-7 and V-121, which suggests the State Bank had seen banks handling this inconsistently.
What changes in practice
If you are a typical freelancer withdrawing from a marketplace or invoicing clients directly, most of your individual inward remittances sit well below USD 25,000. In practice that means your bank should no longer be requesting the Form “R” information set for each of those credits, where previously anything above USD 10,000 triggered it.
The people who still meet the threshold are those receiving large single payments: agency-style operators, freelancers billing enterprise clients on milestone schedules, and anyone consolidating several months of earnings into one transfer. For them the requirement is unchanged, just at a higher bar.
Exchange Companies Association of Pakistan president Zafar Paracha told Business Recorder that easing the reporting should speed up the receipt of export proceeds and encourage exporters to route more foreign exchange through formal channels. That is the policy intent. Whether it shows up in your own settlement times depends heavily on which bank you use.
What did not change
Four things sit outside this circular entirely, and conflating them is where freelancers get into trouble.
Your tax position. The circular is a foreign exchange reporting instrument. It has no bearing on income tax, on the concessional rate available to registered IT exporters, or on your filing status. If you are working through the registration and filing side, that is covered separately in our guide to freelancer tax in Pakistan and the 0.25% rate.
Proceeds Realisation Certificates. A PRC is still the document that proves your earnings came in as an export receipt, and it still depends on the transaction being coded correctly. If your bank tags your inflow under the wrong purpose code, a higher Form “R” threshold will not fix it. The mechanics are in our explainer on purpose code 9186 and what changed in 2026.
Retention in foreign currency. A separate notification issued the same day continued the existing allowance for IT firms and freelancers to retain USD 5,000 per month or 50% of export proceeds, whichever is higher, in Exporters’ Special Foreign Currency Accounts. We covered how that account works in our piece on keeping half your export earnings in dollars.
The bank’s reporting duty. Worth repeating because the headlines obscured it: nothing about this reduces what the State Bank knows about your inflows.
The 30 June digitalisation deadline
The circular gave Authorized Dealers until 30 June 2026 to digitalise the process of seeking information from customers through Appendices V-7 and V-121. The State Bank separately said banks were advised to build auto-population of a customer’s basic data into these forms.
If your bank’s remittance flow changed shape sometime in the middle of this year, moving from a form emailed to you into something inside the app or internet banking portal, this deadline is the likely reason. Banks implemented on different timelines, so experiences across HBL, Meezan, Bank Alfalah and others will not be identical.
Does this make it meaningfully easier to bring money into Pakistan?
Somewhat, and mostly at the margin. The friction it removes is real but narrow: fewer information requests from your bank on mid-sized receipts. The constraints that actually delay freelancers, platform withdrawal timelines, correspondent banking delays, and documentation demands on larger or unusual transfers, are untouched by a form threshold.
It is also worth reading the change against the backdrop it was issued into. The Express Tribune reported the easing as part of a push to accelerate IT export growth at a point when monthly IT export receipts had been sliding, from USD 437 million in December 2025 to USD 374 million in January 2026 and USD 365 million in February 2026, according to State Bank data cited by Business Recorder. Reporting reform was one of the levers available.
Keep your own records regardless
A lighter reporting burden at the bank is not a reason to keep looser records at your end. Continue to retain client contracts and invoices, platform earnings statements, bank credit advices, and your PRCs. You need this trail for your tax filing, for PSEB registration and renewals, and for any future situation where you have to demonstrate the source of foreign currency in your account. The bank asking you for less does not mean anyone else will.
Frequently asked questions
What if a single payment comes in above USD 25,000?
The requirement applies as before, at the higher threshold. Your bank will collect the Form “R” information set for that transaction. Nothing about the process changed for these receipts other than the level at which they are caught.
Is the threshold per transaction or an annual total?
The circular sets the threshold for the forms used to capture details of individual inward remittance transactions, so it reads as per transaction rather than cumulative. Banks apply their own internal monitoring on top of this for other purposes, so confirm with your own bank if you receive frequent large transfers.
Does this affect payments I send abroad?
Form “M” covers outward remittances and its format was revised in the same circular, but the threshold change was specified for Form “R” and the IRV. If you pay overseas vendors or subscriptions, ask your bank how it is applying the revised Form “M” format.
Last updated: 1 September 2026. Regulatory thresholds change. Confirm current requirements with your bank or the State Bank of Pakistan before acting on them.
