Big businesses face system mismatch

The VAT authority has moved to prepare a 'uniform end user' system for the large taxpayers to facilitate submitting VAT returns online without confronting any problem that they were facing with the existing platform.
The VAT Online Project (VOP) recently sought approval of the National Board of Revenue (NBR) to develop the system.
Talking to the FE, a senior official of the project said the system would help solve the existing problems of submitting the returns online.

Currently, the large taxpayers are using different accounting methods of keeping financial and VAT payment records.
The officials said many of them are facing difficulties to submit returns in the IVAS system due to different nature of businesses.
For example, pharmaceutical companies keep record in a method that does not match with that of the mobile phone operators.
The VOP has to modify their system so that it can accept the returns of different business operation systems.
Currently, around 75,000 businesses submit returns online out of 200,000 having VAT registration or Business Identification Number (BIN).
In a recent letter to the NBR, VOP project director Kazi Mustafizur Rahman said they have already incorporated XML file in the IVAS system to facilitate acceptance of the returns to be submitted by the large taxpayers.
The large businesses will then be able to input numerous information at one go while filing the returns, it said.
"It is difficult to upload information in the IVAS system by some of the large businesses as they are using different accounting system," the letter read.
The XML format could be integrated with the uniform end-user VAT software to facilitate businesses submit the online returns, it added.
With this, the IVAS system will be able to capture taxpayers' sales and purchase information to check VAT evasion, it said.
Officials said that since March last, the VOP has been trying to obtain approval of the NBR to prepare the software following the problems faced by the large taxpayers while filing the VAT returns online.
Earlier, the large taxpayers unit (LTU) under the VAT wing sought NBR's intervention for resolving the problems of its taxpayers regarding submission of online returns.
Officials said a number of large taxpayers could not submit online VAT returns yet due to some lacks in the VAT online return submission software. They said mostly the medium-scale ones have submitted VAT returns online.
However, the submission of online VAT returns got a pace in the recent times after the VOP started addressing problems of each of the individual companies.
The VOP officials said they have targeted to bring all the taxpayers under the online system by next year through necessary corrections in the online system.
Recently, the government has extended the tenure of VOP by six months until June 30, 2021 as a number of tasks of the project remained pending. The project was scheduled to expire on December 31, 2020.
The VOP has developed some three online modules out of 16 until December. The modules include online VAT registration, VAT return and e-payment.
The government undertook the VOP involving Tk 6.90 billion on May 9, 2014 with the fund support of the World Bank (WB) to automate the VAT administration.
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