Corporate tax and company tax return in Chattogram

Under section 166 every company files a return each year, whether it made a profit, a loss or did no business at all. Firms and associations of persons file their own entity return too. The return starts from the audited financial statements but is not the same thing: accounting profit is adjusted for expenses the tax law does not allow, tax depreciation replaces book depreciation, and the result is compared with the minimum tax on turnover.

In Chattogram we mostly work with trading and import houses in Agrabad and Khatunganj, shipping and C&F companies, garment accessories makers, steel and re-rolling units and CEPZ suppliers. For these businesses a large share of tax is collected at source — at import, on bills from buyers, on bank interest — and matching those credits to the right year is often where the money is.

Two checks matter more in Chattogram than elsewhere. The first is minimum tax: trading and import houses often run on thin margins, so the tax on profit can fall below the minimum tax on turnover, and the return has to show which one applies and why. The second is tax collected at source. A garment accessories maker may have tax deducted on every bill by its exporter buyers; an importer has advance tax collected at the Custom House on each consignment; a shipping agent has tax deducted by principals. Each of those amounts is only a credit if the certificate or challan is in hand and matches the year. We list them one by one against the bank statements before the return is drafted, so the circle can verify them without a hearing.

Most Chattogram companies are assessed by a circle in one of Taxes Zones 1 to 6, chosen by the registered office address on the company e-TIN. Some large company files sit with the Large Taxpayer Unit’s Chattogram branch instead. We confirm which office holds your file from last year’s acknowledgement or assessment order before preparing anything. One rule matters for disputes: under section 286(2) an appeal by a company goes only to the Commissioner of Taxes (Appeals) — for Chattogram companies, the Taxes Appeal Zone, Chattogram.

For a company we have not filed for before:

Work starts when the audit is signed; filing before that usually means revising later. A company with clean source-tax records takes a couple of weeks from audited accounts to filing. Where certificates are missing we chase buyers and banks, which is the slow part — so start early.

Section 170(2), as replaced by the Finance Act 2026, sets the company deadline at the 15th day of the ninth month after the income year ends — 15 March for the usual 30 June year-end — or 15 September if that date would fall earlier. File at least two months before the deadline and the company earns a rebate of 5% of the tax payable or Tk 25,000, whichever is lower. File late within the tax year and extra tax of 2% or Tk 25,000, whichever is higher, applies. A missed return also leaves the assessment to the circle, which is rarely in the company’s favour.

There is no government fee for filing. Our fee depends on the size of the accounts and how many source-tax credits need matching, and is fixed in writing before we start. If the company has no auditor yet, we arrange the audit through our partner chartered accountancy firms and show that fee separately.