Bangladesh Considers Introducing QR Codes on Tax Stamps

Bangladesh’s National Board of Revenue (NBR) chairman Md Abdur Rahman Khan has announced that the NBR is considering introducing QR codes on tobacco tax stamps.

Speaking at a pre-budget meeting with the Anti-Tobacco Media Alliance, he said high taxes on tobacco products had created a huge amount of illicit cigarettes entering the country. Furthermore, some bidi companies (bidis are cheap cigarettes made of unprocessed tobacco wrapped in leaves) were using counterfeit stamps to avoid paying these taxes.

But what is considered a ‘huge amount of illicit cigarettes’ in Bangladesh is seen as ‘hardly anything at all’ in other countries, given that Bangladesh’s illicit tobacco levels represent a fraction of levels experienced elsewhere.

According to the 2018 World Bank report ‘Confronting Illicit Tobacco Trade: A Global Review of Country Experiences1’, the fact that cigarettes provide such a large source of government revenue to Bangladesh (about 11% of the country’s total tax revenue in 2017-18) serves to explain why illicit levels of cigarettes are so low: because the NBR is particularly vigilant in protecting this revenue source.