The authorities concerned is optimistic that they will be able to give a boost in setting up Electrical Fiscal Devise (EFD) or Sales Data Controller (SDC) following the improved situation of the Covid-19 pandemic.
In order to ensure transparency and accountability, the National Board of Revenue (NBR) started to set up EFD on August 25, 2019. They were scheduled to setup 10,000 EFD or Sales Data Controller (SDC) machines in different business establishment. However, until now the official concerned hardly installed only 3393 EFDs.
All kinds of businesses were closed due to strict restrictions imposed by the government to prevent coronavirus infection which obstructed to meeting the goal, said an official of NBR.
However, he said that NBR even unable to conduct its experimental activity due to the pandemic. As it is an ongoing process, efforts will be continued to complete the required work.
According to the NBR, back in 2019 the than chairman of NBR inaugurated the installment of EFDs. At then, primarily they set up 100 EFDs. NBR planning was to setup 3000 EFDs by February, 4000 by March, and 10,000 EFDs by June of this year.
The SDC is a solution to prevent tax evasion on cash registers, point of sale systems and other invoicing systems. It stores sales and tax information. An EFD is a device similar to SDC. It is used in place of an electronic cash register. It can store sales information. An EFD is cheaper than an SDC. Besides, there is no maintenance cost.
EFD machines are being set up to get up-to-date information on VAT by storing transaction information in the service sector, including hotels, restaurants and department stores.
As part of the government's plan to plug VAT evasion, the use of EFD are made compulsory in 25 service sectors. The first phase is being given free of cost to encourage traders to use this machine.
Installation of EFDs is not mandatory for the businesses with annual sales less than Tk 50 lakh.
According to the Bangladesh Shop Owners Association, there are some 2.2 million small- and medium-sized shops across the country.
