Resource Portal | OGR Legal

Business laws and regulations of Bangladesh

You are here: Home / Blog

Unpaid vat must be Paid: RJSC

On 20.04.2021, RJSC published a notice (the notice is undated) regarding the payment of unpaid VAT for services received from RJSC during the financial year 2014-15 to 2017-18. During this period, though there was provision for VAT on the services of RJSC under the VAT Act 1991 and VAT Rules 1991, RJSC did not impose the VAT on their machine-generated payment slip. Here, you should note that any person who (was and) is preparing and submitting the return of any company cannot generate payment slip on their own or put the amount. The payment slip (as well as the amount) is generated by the system implemented by RJSC. Thus, it was an oversight by RJSC themselves.  

RJSC also published a list of the unpaid amount of VAT for each company. Unless companies pay the unpaid VAT, as per the notice RJSC will not provide any further services to those companies.  

Download – বকেয়া ভ্যাট সম্পর্কিত বিজ্ঞপ্তি.

Monetary Jurisdiction of the lower courts increased

Bangladesh Parliament on 12 May 2016, passed the “Civil Courts (Amendment) Act, 2016”. It will amend the Civil Courts Act, 1887. It will expand the monetary jurisdiction of lower court judges.

According to the amendment, district judges will try civil cases with suit value of Tk. 5 crores instead of existing Tk. 5 lakhs. Assistant judges will try civil cases with suit value of Tk. 15 lakhs from Tk. 2 lakhs and senior assistant judges Tk. 25 lakhs from Tk. 4 lakhs.

Purpose of the amendment is to lessen the burden of the High Court.

Economic zones are exempted from BOI and Local Government Tax

All economic zones and all entities established in the economic zone in Bangladesh are exempted from the requirements of Board of Investment. They are also exempted from the taxation of Local Government (Pourosova). Bangladesh government on 25th April 2016 published two gazettes in this regard.

Usually, a company is required to obtain certain approval and registration from the Board of Investment (“BOI”) while operating in Bangladesh. In some cases, it is very much difficult to import capital machinery without certain documents from BOI. Since the economic zones are exempted from this requirement, we are yet to see how this will be played out in practice.

Pourosova usually imposes certain tax on the business entities established/operating within its jurisdiction. Economic zones are exempted from these taxation from now on.

NBFIs allowed to hold meetings via video conference with BB approval

Non-Banking Financial Institution can now hold board meeting, executive committee meeting or audit committee meeting through video conference if necessary while their chairman or any director are staying outside Bangladesh. However, they must obtain prior approval of Bangladesh Bank.

Bangladesh Bank through a circular being number DIFM Circular No. 05 dated April 18, 2016, introduced this restriction.