Staff Reporter:
The Jatiya Sangsad (JS) yesterday passed the Finance Bill 2026 with a good number of significant changes, including raising the income tax-free ceiling for individual taxpayers and withdrawing the pro-posed provision on the disclosure of investments.
Finance Minister Amir Khasru Mahmud Chowdhury moved the bill, which was passed by voice vote with Speaker Hafiz Uddin Ahmad, Bir Bikram, in the chair.
Following requests made by the Prime Minister during his budget discussion speech, the Finance Minis-ter revised several proposals in the national budget, including increasing the income tax-free threshold for individual taxpayers over the next five fiscal years.
Under the revised proposal, the tax-free threshold has been set at Taka 400,000 for FY2026-27 and FY2027-28, Taka 450,000 for FY2028-29 and FY2029-30, and Taka 500,000 for FY2030-31.
The proposed budget had originally set the thresholds at Taka 375,000, Taka 400,000 and Taka 450,000 respectively for those periods.
The minister also withdrew the proposed provision on the disclosure of investments, which had triggered public concern and misunderstanding.
He said the proposal had been intended to protect taxpayers from complications arising because many land transactions are registered at mouza values rather than actual market prices.
However, respecting public opinion, the government decided to withdraw the provision.
Khasru also withdrew two other proposed measures that had created confusion among the public – mak-ing the submission of Taxpayer Identification Number (TIN) certificates mandatory for opening most bank accounts and requiring TIN certificates for the registration of partition deeds and property muta-tions.
The Finance Minister proposed reducing the income tax rate for private universities from the existing 10 percent to 5 percent.
He also expanded tax exemptions for indigenous communities in both the three hill districts and the plains by proposing that salary income, in addition to income from business, agriculture and other eco-nomic activities, be exempt from tax.
To support the shrimp sector, he proposed withdrawing customs duty, regulatory duty, supplementary duty and VAT on imported shrimp feed, probiotics, vitamins, minerals, other essential inputs and related machinery.
He also proposed duty concessions on imported raw materials used by local industries and sought the complete withdrawal of the existing 10 percent supplementary duty on imported honey used by pharma-ceutical and other manufacturing industries.
The minister proposed reducing the import duty on PVC and PET resin, widely used as industrial raw materials, from the proposed 10 percent to 5 percent.
He also sought the withdrawal of proposed regulatory duties on imported cold-rolled sheets used in fire door manufacturing, coated chromium oxide used in flat steel products and refined copper wire used by electrical cable manufacturers.
In addition, he proposed abolishing the proposed 15 percent VAT and advance tax on imported fire bricks.
The customs duty on unprocessed cashew nuts imported as raw materials for the domestic cashew pro-cessing industry would be reduced from 15 percent to 5 percent.
The Finance Minister also proposed extending duty concessions on imported raw materials for locally manufactured LED lamps and prefabricated buildings until June 30, 2030.
To encourage formal payment channels for digital advertising, he proposed reducing the existing 15 per-cent VAT on advertisements placed on social media platforms, OTT platforms, search engines, online marketplaces and other digital media to 5 percent, expressing hope that the lower rate would discourage informal overseas payments and improve tax compliance.
He also proposed fixing VAT on gold, platinum and diamond jewellery at Taka 2,500 and on silver jew-ellery at Taka 100, exempting the 15 percent VAT on revenue-sharing arrangements with the Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC), and granting full VAT exemption at the supplier level for all fish supplies.
To promote domestic automobile manufacturing, the Finance Minister proposed reducing VAT on local-ly manufactured double-cabin pickup trucks and microbuses from 15 percent to 5 percent.
He also decided to relax coefficient filing requirements under the VAT system for selected sectors to simplify compliance for businesses.
