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Govt to supply 10,000 e-cash registers to shops

Sohel Parvez
The government plans to provide 10,000 electronic cash registers to shops, restaurants and other businesses at purchase price in an effort to curb tax dodging in retail sales.
The move came after Finance Minister AMA Muhith unveiled the plan to buy the machines in his budget speech, to encourage its use in record keeping of sales and curb VAT dodging.
The government made the ECR mandatory in 2008 for 11 types of businesses, but its use has remained low for the last several years due to poor monitoring by the field offices under the revenue authority.
The National Board of Revenue has already taken an initiative to buy the devices.
"Our plan is to ensure installation of ECRs by July 1 next year,” said Syed Mushfequr Rahman, deputy project
director ofVAT Online Project.
The revenue administrator plans to buy these devices based on the feedback from its field offices that there are 8,007 entities in Bangladesh for the pilot phase which are suitable for using the devices.
The NBR sought the finance minister's approval after estimating that around Tk 20 crore would be needed to buy the devices.
Officials said Muhith suggested buying 10,000 ECRs at zero-duty initially and said other businesses will be brought under the ECRs gradually.
Later, the NBR gave the task of buying the devices to the VAT Online Project.
The government takes the move to ensure that shops are using the devices, as it plans to implement the VAT and Supplementary Duty Act 2012 from July next year. The law envisages a 15 percent VAT and seeks to end the package or fixed VAT benefit enjoyed by the retailers, including many large and medium retails, although they do not fall under the category.
As there will be no package VAT under the new law, stores that have an annual turnover of above Tk 30 lakh will have to pay a 3 percent turnover tax under the new law.
Retails with less than Tk 30 lakh in annual turnover will remain out of the purview of VAT, according to the NBR.
Rahman of VAT Online Project said the government wants to create a level-playing field for all businesses.
As there will be no package or fixed VAT system, it is necessary to ensure that shops use the sales recording devices, he said.
If businesses do not use the electronic devices to keep sales data, it creates scope for them to suppress the numbers and dodge
the VAT paid by customers.
Shops without ECRs will tend to sell goods at prices lower than the shops with those machines, officials said.
"It will create an uneven competition in the market and hurt compliant traders," said Rahman.
The devices will remain connected with NBR's online system so that none can manipulate data, he said.
In the absence of connection with the NBR, the shops that use the devices may input data on their will, he said.
“Customers should take ECR receipts from the businesses to make sure the VAT payments are properly sent to the state coffers," Rahman said.
Actual figures on the number of installed ECRs are not available. But some revenue officials earlier said the number of businesses and points of sales using the devices would be close to 5,000.