Some 13 types of businesses, including hotels, restaurants and supermarkets, will have to begin using electronic fiscal devices from November 1 this year to record transactions and issue sales receipts to customers, said the revenue authority.

Businesses operating in district towns will have to start using EFDs, electronic fiscal printer (EFP) and point-of-sales (POS) from December 1, as per the order issued by the National Board of Revenue last week.

It means that businesses will have two to three months to comply with the order.

The revenue authority's directive comes two months after Finance Minister AMA Muhith shared the plan to make use of EFDs in his budget speech for the fiscal 2018-19 to combat VAT evasion at the retail level.

The EFD, which will be connected with electronic fiscal device management systems (EFDMS) at the NBR, will replace the conventional electronic cash registers (ECR) that are now in use in many stores.

The NBR did not specify whether the ECRs that many firms installed in line with a 2008 order of the tax authority will be phased out immediately.

At present, several thousand shops use ECR and POS machines. However, not all use the device to issue sales invoices to customers in an attempt to appropriate the VAT and hide actual transaction figures from taxmen. The NBR has given technical specification of EFDs and EFPs for traders to ensure before installing in their stores to record sales.

The EFDs must be able to exchange data with EFDMS. Business will get code from EFDMS and issue sales receipts to customers.

Each EFD will be registered against one Business Identification Number (BIN). But if a business uses two or more EFDs, all will be registered against a single BIN.

If any business uses POS, the firm will have to have EFP and the device should have features to send data to EFDMS at the NBR.

Hotels, restaurants, supermarkets, clothing stores and shops in malls, sweet shops, furniture stores, beauty parlours, electronic or electrical household items sellers, community centres, department stores, small and medium wholesale stores and jewellery stores will have to use EFDs.

The NBR should have issued the order of implementing EFD after discussing it with businesses, said Helal Uddin, president of the Bangladesh Shop Owners Association.

“Discussion is necessary as many shop operators do not realise yet that the use of ECR allows them to keep accounts properly. It will not be possible to implement the system by force.”