Fresh BINs mandatory

The country's businesses will have to obtain fresh Business Identification Numbers (BINs) from January, 2016 as a part of process of implementation of new Value Added Tax (VAT) and Supplementary Duty (SD) Act-2012.
The BINs would be provided to the VAT payers online upon submission of necessary data of businesses for VAT registration.
The new VAT law, scheduled to come into effect from July 1, 2016, would be implemented under a fully-automated system, officials said.
As per the implementation programme, the VAT wing will have to start fresh BIN registration from the beginning of the next calendar year.
On November 30, the VAT wing invited a fresh tender to select companies for procuring software and hardware befitting to the requirement of the new law.
A senior official of the National Board of Revenue (NBR) said the process of primary selection of the companies might be completed by May 31.
He said some three companies have so far submitted their proposals for bidding. The companies are Vietnamese company FPT,   Hayes and Haier and Sojoma of Flora.
 The government will sign contract with a competent company by June to meet the deadline for VAT law implementation, the official said.
Officials said the VAT wing expects involvement of a global software giant with adequate capacity to run the vital software COTS (commercial-off-the-shelf) for the project.
Officials said none of the companies is fully qualified in the list of Gartner, the world's leading information technology research and advisory company.
Gartner is the IT professional's best first source for addressing virtually any IT issue because of its world-class, objective insight, rapid access to that insight, and low-cost compared to the impact and other alternatives.
Officials, however, said an evaluation committee would select a company by assessing all aspects, its competence and capacity.
Earlier, the Cabinet Purchase Committee had sent back a proposal of the NBR's tender document on selection of a company for VAT online project. It asked the NBR to invite re-tender identifying faults in the tender process for selecting a company.
Implementation of VAT law is a condition of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) against disbursement of its External Credit Facility (ECF) fund. However, two of the installments have already been deferred due to delay in implementation of the VAT law.
The issue of implementation of the new VAT law, passed by the parliament in 2012, was reviewed several times after it faced stiff opposition from the businesses. Finally, the government decided to enforce it from July, 2016.
The government decided to impose the VAT law with a single rate 15 per cent while businesses demanded multiple rates for survival of small businesses.
A senior VAT official said some 168 large corporate taxpayers with annual turnover Tk 10 million may not face any problem with the new law.
"The taxpayers contribute above 50 per cent of aggregate VAT collection of the NBR. The automated system would be able to bring rest of the mid-level businesses under recoded transaction system," he said.
Recently, the government has decided to raise the ceiling of VAT-free turnover for companies to Tk 3.6 million from Tk 2.4 million by amending the new VAT law, he added.
With the upward adjustment, small businesses would get relief from payment of VAT, he said.
The VAT wing eyes the ratio of VAT to Gross Domestic Product (GDP) to increase by at least one percentage point by 2019 with the implementation of new law. The VAT-to-GDP ratio for 2012-13 is 3.7 per cent.
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