E-payment of import duty to be made mandatory

The Customs authority is set to make e-payment of duties and taxes mandatory for import of capital machinery and raw materials.

The customs wing under the National Board of Revenue (NBR) has planned to make the digital payment compulsory as it moves to battle faking invoices while popularising the modern payment.

Initially, it would introduce the e-payment for the import of products involving higher amount of revenue and later payments would be made mandatory for in phases by December 2021, officials said.

Through e-payment, the importers or clearing and forwarding agents can pay directly from their bank accounts to government treasury through Bangladesh Bank' RTGS (real-time gross settlement).

Officials said the e-payment for importers was introduced in 2017 but it was optional then.

The submission of fake chalan, tax evasion and the revenue figure mismatch between the office of the controller-general of accounts and the tax collector will be stopped if e-payment is introduced in all cases of payment, they said.

Officials said the ongoing process of duties and tax payments gives the scope for C&F agents to deposit the lower than the actual amount of revenue paid by importers, which would not be possible in e-payment system.

According to Customs data, importers paid duties and taxes worth Tk 41.10 billion through e-payment during July-March of the Fiscal Year (FY) 2019-2020.

It is a small portion out of the total customs duties collected worth Tk 605.52 billion for the last financial year.

Importers paid Tk 6.30 billion duties online in FY2017, which went up to Tk 14.50 billion in FY2018.

But in FY 2018-2019, the amount declined to Tk 11.30 billion.

The NBR introduced the e-payment system to implement the article 7.2 of the World Trade Organisation's Trade Facilitation Agreement (TFA).

Currently, a total of 41 banks are connected with the e-payment system.

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