National Board of Revenue will not impose any value added tax on online business.
This was disclosed by the country’s top tax man Mosharraf Hossain Bhuiyan who along with Finance and other ministers attended a post-budget press briefing.
Mosharraf said, “We have started a process to impose tax on virtual business like Facebook, Google, youtube, but no vat was imposed on online business.”
Finance Minister AMA Muhith on Thursday in his budget speech proposed that online business will be brought within the tax net and five percent VAT would be imposed against the transaction.
Justifying his decision, Muhith said internet technology, social media and mobile application platform based virtual business are booming and on these “5 per cent VAT shall be imposed.”
Muhith also proposed to introduce new provisions in the laws regarding the taxation of virtual and digital sectors such as facebook, google, youtube on their income earned in Bangladesh.
“Such measure shall expand our tax base,” he said in the speech.
The minister said many foreign entities are earning in Bangladesh through virtual and digital transactions, but the country is not getting adequate tax from them.
“Since these virtual and digital business transactions are comparatively new, our tax laws were not sufficiently up-to-date to bring all virtual transactions into tax net,” he said.