NBR waives SD, VAT on MNP service

M A Rahman Masum: The government has waived value added tax (VAT) and supplementary duty (SD) on mobile number portability service (MNP) among operators tagged a set of two conditions.

On January 13, 2019, National Board of Revenue (NBR) according to the decision of the finance ministry issued a statutory regulatory order (SRO) singed by the secretary of internal resources division and NBR Chairman Md Mosharraf Hossain Bhuiyan. The order has been effective since January 7.

A source at the NBR confirmed the matter to risingbd.

According to the SRO, mobile operators mandatorily have to send a report at the first week of every month containing detailed information related to MNP service of previous month to relevant VAT commissionerate and to the Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC).

The report must include total balance of SIM cards in previous month, number of subscribers ported in and ported out to the network of the reporting mobile operator under the MNP service, amount of waived taxes against the SIM cards and data of SIM replacement for other reasons and collection of taxes from those replacement, the SRO said.

MNP service processing agency must also have to send details data of MNP service at the first week of every month to BRTC and field-level VAT commissionerate.

The report will contain the names of subscribers ported in and ported out to and from all mobile operators, their mobile numbers and other relevant information of existing and changed operators.

NBR will have mandate to take any legal steps to investigate into the compliance issues about the conditions of the operators, it added. The revenue authorities would cancel the waiver in case of violation of the conditions, the SRO said

The BTRC on October 1, 2018 introduced the MNP service in the country to facilitate customers to change their operators without changing their existing mobile numbers.


risingbd/Dhaka/Jan 15, 2019/M A Rahman/AI