Bangladesh VAT Professionals Forum (VAT Forum) is a non-profit, non-political, professional organization with more than a thousand members now at it’s fold. Founded in 2010 and registered in 2014, the VAT Forum has meantime become a widely known organization in the area of VAT in Bangladesh. We have introduced VAT system in Bangladesh in the year 1991. So, we have a 32 years history of VAT in Bangladesh. But our VAT system is not yet known as a friendly system to revenue, business and investment. Number of registration is low in terms of the number of businesses operating. Number of return submission is low in terms of the number of registration. Revenue generation is not satisfactory in terms of the size of the economy. VAT Forum is formed to work in the area of VAT to address these challenges. Our ultimate aim is to establish a standard VAT system in Bangladesh.

A system has several components, in the VAT system the same are there. The components of VAT system are: laws, rules and regulations; the VAT payers, the VAT collectors, information technology system and professionals. These components work together, thus the system runs and generates output, i.e. revenue. In the VAT system, most important component is the professionals. The professionals work as the lubricant among all other components to keep the system functioning. Ironically, in the VAT system of Bangladesh, we do not have enough professionals, keeping aside skilled professionals. So, the VAT Forum started developing VAT professionals imparting them with proper VAT training. VAT Forum has trained thousands of people, of them more than a thousand has become members of VAT Forum. VAT Forum runs several courses of them 25 session Standard Course and 6 months long Practical VAT Management course are most important.

VAT Forum has developed a good community. A sister organization of VAT Forum runs the 6 month long Practical VAT Management course approved by the Bangladesh Technical Education Board (BTEB). VAT Forum is running a call center for providing free VAT-related services to the people. It’s number 09678-208208. VAT Forum has developed a VAT software in partnership with an information technology firm to be used by the VAT registered entities to maintain VAT accounts. A housing society is being developed for VAT Forum members. Works to establish a VAT University has started.

VAT contributes to the major share of domestic revenue of our government. There are prospects for collecting more revenue from VAT alone. Establishing a standard VAT system, we can harness the potentials of the economy to collect more domestic revenue to implement bigger projects to turn the country a developed one by 2041. The VAT Forum is working to that end.

May Allah bless!