Adcomm faces Tk 57.6 million VAT dodge charges

The authorities have sued advertisement company Adcomm Ltd on charges of dodging Tk 57.6 million Value Added Tax or VAT.

The VAT Audit, Intelligence and Investigation Directorate started the case against the ad firm at the Customs, Excise and VAT Commissionerate, Dhaka (South) on Tuesday.

An investigation revealed that the company collected VAT from its clients but did not put it in the government coffers, Moinul Khan, the head of the directorate, said.

“The organisation had been operating business by dodging VAT for a long time,” the director general added.  

Geeteara Safiya Choudhury, the founder and chairman of Adcomm, was an advisor to the military-controlled caretaker government in 2007-08.

Adcomm said in a statement that it has always handled financial transactions transparently.

It added that it was ready to take steps swiftly if any deviation is found.   

Led by Assistant Director Khaja Ahmed Talukder, the VAT detectives carried out an operation at the Adcomm office in Dhaka’s Tejgaon on Apr 14, 2019.

They seized documents on the company’s business activities from 2013-14 tax year to 2017-18.

The investigators found the evidence of tax evasion when they cross-checked the documents with VAT returns submitted by the company in this period.  

Adcomm dodged VAT worth Tk 23.3 million payable against its income from ad services, said Moinul.

The firm dodged Tk 29.6 million VAT, including Tk 111,000 against building rents and another Tk 4.15 million from taxes deductible at source.

It has another Tk 28.1 million due in 2 percent interests on the dodged VAT in line with the law, Moinul said. The total payable amount sums Tk 57.6 million.

The directorate asked the commissionerate to closely watch the company identifying it as a “risky business”.

Mahmudul Kabir Hira, the head of finance at Adcomm, said in a statement that they came to know about the allegations from the media.

The VAT detectives did go to the Adcomm office as part of “routine work”, but did not inform the company about what they had found or about the allegations, he said.  

Adcomm has “always given the highest priority to financial transparency and compliance with the law”, he said.

It believes it has paid all the VAT required by the law, but it stands ready to settle any issue if the authorities draw its attention to that, he added.

The statement claimed Adcomm paid more than Tk 210 million in VAT in past five years and faces such allegations for the first time in 45 years.