The Bangladesh High Court has ordered the government to tax revenues of digital platforms, including Google, Facebook and YouTube.
The order came on Thursday following a petition, when the court issued a rule and the interim order.
The government has been told to collect all kinds of applicable taxes, including tax at source and VAT, from revenues made from advertisement, domain registration and licence fees.
The order covers all kinds of international digital companies, including e-commerce giant Amazon, social media like Facebook, search engines Google and Yahoo and video-sharing site YouTube.
The court also issued a rule asking why it will not issue an order taxing revenues of the companies.
Secretaries to ministries of finance, law, telecoms and information, central bank governor, the revenue board chief, head of the telecoms regulators, the president of the newspapers owners’ association as well as Google, Yahoo, Amazon and YouTube authorities have been told to respond by four weeks.
Amid recent calls for regulating digital companies’ revenues as funds spent on advertising are send abroad through illegal channels, a petition seeking the court’s order was filed on Apr 6 by six Supreme Court lawyers.