The High Court has ordered the authorities to collect revenue, including tax at source and other taxes on all sorts of transactions for advertisement, domain sale, licence and other fees, from internet-based platforms like Google, Yahoo, Facebook, YouTube and Amazon, reports bdnews24.com.
The National Board of Revenue, Bangladesh Bank, Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission and other agencies will have to collect revenues payable in the past as well from the tech firms.
The court ordered the NBR to submit a report on the progress every six months following the orders, declaring the case as continuous mandamus, meaning the authorities will have to act as per the orders until the ruling is executed.
The panel of Justice Md Ashraful Kamal and Justice Razil-Al-Jalil passed the orders on Sunday after hearing a writ petition filed by Mohammad Humayun Kabir Pallab and five other lawyers in 2018.
After an initial hearing of the petition later in 2018, the High Court had ordered the authorities to tax the tech companies for an interim period and asked why the time span should not be made permanent.
The global internet-based firms are drawing millions of takas from Bangladesh as the users have become habituated to seeing the ads on these platforms, Pallab had said after the rule.
After Sunday's orders, he said the government has failed to collect satisfactory amounts of revenue from the tech giants in two and a half years following the interim order.
The BTRC in a report submitted to the High Court in June 2019 said the five mobile phone operators of Bangladesh paid Google, Facebook, YouTube, Yahoo, WhatsApp, Amazon, Imo and other internet-based firms nearly Tk 87.5 billion in five years in advertisement revenue.
The NBR, in another report submitted at the same time, said the amount was Tk 1.33 billion in five years.
Pallab said the anomaly in the reports can be dealt with later as the case will continue.
