What the BIN is
The BIN is the number National Board of Revenue (NBR) assigns to a taxpayer in Bangladesh. It follows you across every tax you deal with: VAT, income tax and withholding. Businesses that pay you will ask for it before they release payment, because they report their suppliers to National Board of Revenue (NBR) by this number.
Who needs one
You must register for VAT and get a BIN if your turnover passed Tk 50 lakh in the 12 months ending last month, or you expect it to pass Tk 50 lakh in the next 12 months. Below that, from Tk 30 lakh, you enlist as a turnover taxpayer instead. Turnover excludes exempt supplies, sales of capital assets, and the sale of the business or part of it. Section 4(2) overrides the threshold entirely: you must register whatever your turnover if you supply, manufacture or import anything liable to supplementary duty, supply goods or services against a tender, contract or work order, are in the import or export business, set up a branch, liaison or project office of a foreign company, act as a VAT agent, or operate in an area or in goods or services the Board has specified. In practice most small businesses need a BIN anyway: since the Finance Act 2026 a BIN or enlistment certificate must be produced to open or run a current or STD account, take a bank or NBFI loan, renew a trade licence, open an MFS merchant account, join or renew membership of a trade body, get an electricity or gas connection in the business's name, or register a vehicle with BRTA. Voluntary registration is available under section 8.
How to register, step by step
- Go to vat.gov.bd, the eVAT portal, and create a user ID and password in the name of the person or entity that will be registered — not in an agent's name.
- Fill in Form Mushak 2.1, the VAT registration and turnover tax enlistment application: business type, addresses of every place of business, the economic activities you carry on, and your turnover estimate. Apply within 30 days of crossing the threshold.
- Decide central versus unit registration before you submit. Under section 5 you may take a single central registration only if accounts, tax payment and records for all locations supplying the same or similar goods or services are kept centrally in automated software; if any unit keeps its own, that unit registers separately, and anyone supplying different goods or services from two or more places must register each place.
- Upload the scanned supporting files the form calls for and submit. There is no government fee.
- Collect the certificate. Since the Finance Act 2026 rules changes, eVAT approves a valid application automatically and issues the BIN immediately to your registered email address; the VAT registration certificate is Mushak 2.3, and a turnover taxpayer gets an enlistment certificate instead. Display it at your place of business — section 13 requires it to be visible, and section 85 fines you Tk 10,000 if it is not.
How to find or check a BIN
Section 7 of the Act puts the burden on NBR: the Board must prepare, publish, circulate and maintain a list of registered persons, and the section then says in terms that a person whose name is not on the published list is not to be treated as registered, and a person whose name is on it is. Verification is done through the eVAT portal at vat.gov.bd. NBR separately publishes a public, searchable list of businesses running EFD or SDC fiscal devices on its own site.