The National Board of Revenue (NBR) has formed a committee to collect year-wise data on the incomes of social media platforms and search engines from the digital advertisements of local firms to bring those under VAT net.
Besides, the NBR is collecting organisation-based monthly data on how much money was transacted abroad for the advertisement purpose and how much Value Added Tax (VAT) and income tax were collected in the last five years.
The decision was taken in a recent meeting of NBR’s special committee.
The meeting decided to send a letter to the central bank to get the monthly and organisation-based data of the last five years for payment on digital advertisement and transaction of money for the purpose, and collection of VAT and income tax from this pocket.
It also decided to co-opt a representative of the Bangladesh Financial Intelligence Unit (BFIU) in the special committee. From the meeting, the NBR decided to send letters to the Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC) to get data about the published digital advertisement of mobile phone operators, Google, Whatsapp, Yahoo, Amazon, Youtube, facebook and IMO and their incomes from Bangladeshi advertisements.
Meanwhile, the Bangladesh Bank recently asked all the banks to be strict on the payment procedure and deduct 15 percent VAT on overseas payments for online purchases and adverts on digital platforms as a measure to collect VAT on payments for advertisements published or services taken from digital and social media platforms.
