The week-long National VAT Week organised for the fifth consecutive year by the National Board of Revenue (NBR) ended up yesterday amid festivity across the country.
Through different activities and campaigns, the tax authority was able to draw a huge response from VAT payers, mostly from the district levels, officials said.
The week-long programme has created awareness among people and businesses about paying VAT.
“We have made people aware of the necessity of paying VAT and they responded very positively,” NBR member (VAT implementation and IT) Enayet Hossain told the Dhaka Tribune.
The field-level officials went door to door to make people aware of the new VAT law and taxpayers have visited the commissionerate concerned to know about the process which is very positive, he said.
The government is set to implement the new Vat and Supplementary Duty Act 2012 from July 1, 2016 that will have no provisions for package VAT or truncated value-based VAT system.
With the introduction of the law, all level of business have to pay a unique and a single VAT rate at 15%.
“The significant progress of the event is that leading chambers, including the Federation of Bangladesh Chamber of Commerce and Industry has shown their keen interest to be partner of these week-long event,” the NBR member added.
As part of the week-long programme, the NBR organised a central discussion and award giving ceremony in Dhaka while separate functions were organised in seven divisional headquarters – Chittagong, Sylhet, Comilla, Rangpur, Rajshahi, Khulna and Jessore.
Currently, only 60,000 business firms submit their VAT returns although the number of eligible companies is at least 3-6 lakh, according to NBR.
To make VAT payers more compliant, NBR observed National VAT Day on June 10 and National VAT Week from July 10 to 16.
As part of the programme, A total of 119 companies across the country were awarded for their contribution to the government exchequer in financial year 2013-14 .
Nine companies received awards at national level and 110 at district levels in three categories– production, service and business.
The NBR is assigned to collect Tk176,370 crore revenue in the current fiscal including the highest Tk64,262 crore from Vat.