The allegation against commercial institutions of not paying Value Added Tax (VAT) after billing customers for it on expenses is not new.Now the issue has come to the fore during the National Board of Revenue’s (NBR’s) campaign.People are also taking to the social networking sites to criticise such fraud by the companies. The board’s VAT Sub-Wing Audit & Intelligence said on Sunday most of the outlets at the shopping malls in Dhaka were not paying VAT.On Oct 21, one Nishan Ishtiaque in a Facebook post detailed how a coffee shop was swindling the authorities out of VAT after collecting it from the customers.Ishtiaque said he used a mobile-phone app, VAT Checker, to see the registration number the shop provided in its bill.No shop with that registration number was found, he added.Many such incidents were shared in the social media in the past few days.A media release from the NBR’s VAT Sub-Wing Audit & Intelligence said they found such allegations true.The release said the department found recently that most of the shops at the malls in Dhaka did not have any registration number.VAT is not paid properly in these cases, it said.
The NBR department conducted raids in Tejgaon, Moghbazar, Doyaganj Morh, Postogola and several other areas from Oct 8 to 15.It seized nine vehicles of big firms of cement, furniture, thermosetting, moulding compound powder, HDP coil pipe, ice cream, ceiling fan and bicycle. Charges were also pressed against them.he NBR officials said many of the companies were not using any VAT bill or using the same bill more than once to evade paying VAT.The NBR said it detected Tk 1.35 billion of VAT evasion in fiscal 2014-15 year.
