Mobile phone usage has become costlier as the mobile phone operators have started to collect 1% surcharge on the amount paid by their subscribers for obtaining services using Subscriber Identity Module (SIM) and Removable User Identity Module (RUIM) cards, as well as memory cards.
The Value-Added Tax (VAT) wing of the National Board of Revenue (NBR) issued the rules on March 8 to implement the decision.
With the implementation of the move, use of mobile phones becomes more expensive as the surcharge will be collected from all the services including voice calls, short messaging services and multimedia messaging services, internet and other services.
Earlier, users were sharing 15% VAT on any use of mobile phone services including voice, data, or any other value-added services as well as a 3% supplementary duty.
Mobile phone operators have started charging the new surcharge after the Internal Resources Division issued guidelines to them on Tuesday to collect it from the subscribers.
NBR officials said they would collect information from Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC) on regular basis to check whether the tax was being deposited in government exchequer properly or not.
Although the rules have also imposed 1% surcharge on usage of memory cards, NBR officials stated that they were yet to finalise any mechanism on how to implement the provision.
According to a primary projection, 1% surcharge on SIM and RUIM cards will generate an additional Tk140 crore revenue for the government every year. The amount collected from surcharge would be spent on education and healthcare.
The NBR first undertook the move to impose the surcharge in July 2014 but failed to implement it in absence of the related laws and rules.
Later on November 15 last year, the parliament passed a gazette notification on the Development Surcharge and Levy (Imposition and Collection) Bill 2015 to collect the surcharge.
According to the BTRC's estimates, six mobile phone operators in Bangladesh have a totoal 132 million subscribers as of January 2016. Grameenphone has the largest subscriber base with 56.204 million, followed by Banglalink with 32.368 million.