The majority of the country’s large business firms are facing problems in filing value-added tax returns online due to limitations of the VAT Online System of the National Board of Revenue.

Of the 142 companies under the Large Taxpayers’ Unit (VAT) of the NBR, only 67 firms have so far managed to file VAT returns online.

The remaining 75 firms mainly from tobacco, telecommunication, pharmaceutical, bank, insurance and other higher revenue generating sectors are yet to file returns online due to flaws in the NBR system and are filing paper-based manual returns.

Tax officials said that the companies informed the LTU (VAT) about the problems, including design flaw of the returns module, capacity flaw in various fields and limited capacity for file attachment, in the system.

The LTU (VAT) has recently requested the VAT Online Project to address the issues so that the companies could file returns online, they said.

The NBR on April 1, 2019 launched online VAT returns submission for large-scale businesses and the system became open for all other firms from September.

In a recent letter, LTU (VAT) commissioner Wahida Rahman Chowdhury requested the VOP to solve the problems to ensure online VAT returns submission by the firms.

Large companies will not be able to file VAT returns online unless the problems are addressed, she said.

According to the LTU (VAT), the companies, including Grameenphone, Robi, Banglalink, Teletalk from the telecom sector, Square, Beximco, Incepta, Healthcare and Sanofi from the pharmaceuticals sector, Standard Chartered Bank, Islami Bank, Bank Asia, HSBC, Southeast Bank, Premier Bank, National Bank, DBBL and AB Bank from the banking sector, Unilever Bangladesh Ltd and British American Tobacco Bangladesh Co Ltd, among others, are facing difficulties in filing VAT returns with the NBR system.

The mobile operators have failed to file VAT returns online as the system does not show the option for supplementary duty on mobile data service and does not generate required VAT form, the companies informed the LTU (VAT).

The capacity for uploading a huge number of scanned attachments is also limited, they said, suggesting that the capacity for large companies should be increased.

Pharmaceuticals companies could not give inputs of more than thousand products within a limited time (15 days) on the online system due to an absence of real-time input system.

It is humanly impossible to provide input of all sales and purchase information of thousands of products within 15 days for submission of returns online, they said.

They also don’t know the HS code or service code of locally purchased raw materials.

Banks have failed to file returns online as the system is generating auto penalty at the rate of 2 per cent on the total revenue for submitting returns of the previous months.

The sector is also facing difficulties in completing entry of a huge number of documents within a limited time and problems related to service code and HS code.

Unilever Bangladesh having more than 500 products requested for introduction an option in the return module for uploading a file containing information of all products citing that uploading information for each product separately is impossible.

The company is also facing problems related to supplementary duty.

British American Tobacco reported difficulties in filling in of a sub-form as the form does not have capacity to accept revenue data above 10-digit whereas revenue volume of the company is huge.

The company also could not upload data exceeding 10 MB in the system and more than 10 files though the number of challan or invoice is more than 100 every month.

Officials of the VOP said that that they were trying to resolve the problems so that large companies could file VAT returns online.

Besides, the VOP will also arrange trainings for the representatives of the companies to solve non-technical problems, they said.