Bangladeshi startup, Shapla has recently introduced a new platform, Shapla Tax, making it Shapla’s second product in the market. This platform will allow citizens to calculate and file their taxes online. This new B2C platform intends to automate the tedious process of tax filing and returns with ease and efficiency.
According to the National Board of Revenue (NBR), Bangladesh has a population of 169 million, of which only 6.7 million are taxpayers, making up less than 1 percent of the population that files their taxes. In a recent announcement, the government has made it mandatory for online businesses with revenue of more than Tk 2,00,000 to submit taxes and enforced rules on submitting zero tax returns for freelancers. Shapla Tax enters the market to automate and assist individual taxpayers in navigating through the complex manual process of submitting taxes.
Tax calculations for individual taxpayers have always been manual and in many cases, complex. With this new feature introduced and already being used by a number of users to the fiscal year 2021-2022, Shapla is making taxpayers’ lives easier by using a free tax calculator and automating the entire process via an online portal.
"Currently Bangladeshi taxpayers are paying around Tk 3500 to 5000 to file their taxes with tax accountants or lawyers following an extremely manual process that often requires a lot of time and effort” added Tasnim Mortoza, co-founder, and CEO of Shapla. “Shapla is offering to complete this process for Tk 2000 per file after having it reviewed by tax lawyers thereby making the entire process simpler for taxpayers. Shapla wants to help build Digital Bangladesh by helping create awareness for tax filing, making it easy to calculate individual taxes and file them.” One of their users, Hussain M Elius (Co-founder, Pathao) says, “I hate calculating taxes, good thing I didn’t have to this year, Shapla did it for me this year.
Another of their user Afnan Ibne Hashem (Assistant Manager, Online Payments, bKash Ltd) said “My tax filing is done already. All thanks to Shapla for which I have been doing my taxes with ease for the past 4 years. "Why don't they teach how to prepare taxes in school?" well Shapla made it simple and transparent. Loved the service.”
Shapla first launched in 2021 as a B2B solution providing leave management, asset management, payroll solution, and other HR modules for over 50+ businesses. They have helped many businesses stop money leakage and create transparency throughout their organizations, making relationships between the company and employees easier.