Govt scraps most taxes on edible oil

The National Board of Revenue (NBR) on Monday announced it would keep only 5% import VAT on all types of edible oil and withdraw the remaining taxes until 31 March, for easing the inflationary pressures in Ramadan.

Notably, the Islamic month of Ramadan is expected to fall in March next year.

NBR has issued three separate notifications on edible oil tax reductions to contain the impact of global oil price hikes, it said in a statement Monday.

The state revenue collector has extended the existing duty cuts on soybean and palm oil products to 31 March and imposed new tax reductions on canola and sunflower oil products, it said.

As a result, all the import taxes, regulatory duty, and advanced income tax on import as well as internal VAT have been scrapped while the import VAT has been reduced to 5% from 15%.

As a result of the new tax reductions for canola and sunflower oil products the import cost of these would fall by Tk40-Tk50 per litre, the revenue collector hoped.