This is a long overdue move. Thank you CTG! Of course previous governments could never dream of regularizing the business community!
After all that’s the main source of their bribes!
Regards
Ezajur Rahman
Electronic cash registers mandatory at retail outlets from July 1 2008
New Age 22/10/07
The government is going to make electronic cash registers mandatory at retail level in all large and medium business establishments across the country to earn more in value-added tax and contain tax evasion taking opportunity of the current manual accounting of sales proceeds.
The finance adviser, AB Mirza Azizul Islam, approved the new system on October 17, which will be effective from July 1, 2008, finance ministry sources told New Age.
‘All large and medium retail businesses, many of which have been evading tax taking advantage of the current manual accounting system, will come under the new scheme of electronic cash register,’ Badiur Rahman, outgoing chairman of the National Board of Revenue, told New Age on Saturday.
‘Campaign will start soon for introducing the new system from July 1, 2008,’ he added.
Retail outlets at shopping malls, sweetmeat shops, community centres, hotels, restaurants, furniture shops, beauty parlours, grocery shops, and departmental stores are some of the categories set to be on a list of the revenue board to be made public soon, sources said.
A statutory regulatory order will soon be issued by the NBR in this regard, they added.
The VAT act will also be amended to bring this new system into operation from the next fiscal year.
Publicity will be made through both print and electronic media outlets and a series of dialogues between VAT officials and the shop owners concerned will be arranged on the new mandatory requirement of maintaining electronic cash registers, NBR officials said.
Furthermore, trade licences of the retail businesses are likely to be renewed subject to installation of the cash registers, the sources said. The NBR has recently asked the Dhaka City Corporation to notify all trade licence holders concerned to buy the cash registers by July 1, 2008 if they want to renew their trade licences, they added.
At present there is no duty and VAT at import level on electronic cash registers, costing between Tk 40,000 and Tk 50,000.
But, a section of business leaders expressed their reservation about the government plan to introduce electronic cash registers, saying it would cost the consumers extra expenditures, not the traders.
‘The cash register system, which is used currently by a small number of departmental stores in the capital, does not cost any extra money for the traders, but it does for the consumers,’ Helal Uddin, president of Shop Owners’ Association of Dhaka and a director of the Federation of Bangladesh Chambers of Commerce and Industry, told New Age.
He recommended that small retail outlets should not be subjected to the mandatory requirement.
NBR sources said the new system, if came into operation, would fetch at least Tk 200 crore extra in VAT a year, which now ranges between Tk 50 crore and Tk 60 crore.
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