FE Report

Wholesalers and retailers in the district towns of the country will have to do their business transactions electronically from July 1.

The government has made the use of electronic cash register (ECR) mandatory at all wholesale and retail outlets to determine the amount of Value Added Tax (VAT) payable.

The NBR has directed all of its zonal offices to closely monitor the businesses in district town and collect lists of non-compliant shops.

"We will serve notice to the non-compliant shops after collecting the lists but tax official will not take any stern action against the businesses," said a top official of VAT department.

The NBR will adopt a go-slow policy to familiarize the measure among the businesses, he said.

Existing VAT law allows the taxmen to take punitive actions against the non-compliant shops and business, he said adding that taxmen will not apply the law just now.

The NBR has enforced the decision to implement mandatory installation of ECR from January 1 this year for all city corporation areas.

According to statistics available in the first three months (January- March '09), the NBR found that only 28 per cent businesses had installed the device.

Seven commissionerates of the revenue board carried out an inspection on 2727 shops in the all the city corporation areas across the country.

The NBR has found only 782 shops and business houses where ECR's were installed while the remaining 1945 shops were yet to respond to the order.

Most of the shops are medium businesses which did not comply with the revenue board's order, officials said.

Dhaka (South) VAT office has found 363 businesses with ECR out of 738 establishments while 290 businesses installed ECR under Dhaka (north) out of 290 organisations.

Rajshahi, Khulna and Sylhet commissionarates ECR implementation rates are 57 per cent, 37 per cent and 21 per cent respectively.