NBR hikes excise duty on Far East air route

FE Team | Published: December 12, 2010 00:00:00 | Updated: February 01, 2018 00:00:00

Doulot Akter Mala
The National Board of Revenue (NBR) has doubled excise duty on international air tickets on eight Far East countries, putting in place new guideline to collect taxes from air-borne passengers.
Passengers traveling to Japan, Taiwan, Laos, China, Hong Kong, Vietnam, Cambodia, North and South Korea will have to pay Tk 1000 instead of the current Tk 500.
The NBR has issued an 'excise policy for air tickets, 2010' recently with specific guidelines for collecting excise duty from air tickets.
Any airlines operating in Bangladesh will have to collect the excise duty against sale of tickets and deposit it to the national exchequer.
The board recently issued two separate circulars amending the rules of excise duty collection from international air tickets that was slapped in June through the current budget.
In the policy, the revenue board has divided foreign countries into four regions---Asia, SAARC, Far East and rest of the world including North America, Europe and Africa. In the past, the world was divided into three zones.
Officials said excise duties for other Asian countries, however, will remain the same at Tk 500 while for SAARC countries it will be Tk 300.
In the current fiscal, NBR has re-introduced excise duty on international air tickets that was scarped in 1989.
The NBR estimated that the hike would help the government earn Tk 1.50 billion in additional taxes in the current fiscal alone.