30 August 2026  |  Tax

Startup turnover tax just went to zero

The Finance Act 2026 removed the minimum tax on registered startups' turnover from 1 July. Here is who it covers, and why the exemption is only as strong as the records behind it.

What changed

From 1 July 2026, under the Finance Act 2026, the minimum tax on a registered startup's turnover is zero. Before the change it stood at 0.1 percent of turnover, which sounds small until you remember it was charged on every taka of revenue whether the business made a profit or not. A loss-making startup still paid it.

The exemption sits inside the startup sandbox framework of the Income Tax Act. It applies to startups registered with the NBR, with annual turnover under BDT 100 crore, through their growth years, reported as nine years following incorporation. The same budget carried VAT exemptions for startups on locally supplied services, imported digital services and office rent until June 2035, and a BDT 500 crore startup fund routed through the ICT Division.

Whether your company qualifies is a registration and eligibility question, and the definitions are precise: how the company was formed, when it was incorporated, what it does. That reading belongs with whoever advises you on tax, not with a bookkeeping firm and not with a blog post.

The detail most coverage skipped

Three of the new rules quietly assume something about your books.

• The exemption is defined by a turnover number. Under BDT 100 crore you are in; over it you are not. The only thing standing behind the figure you claim is your own ledger, reconciled to bank and wallet statements someone else can check.
• Losses carried forward are only worth what your records prove. Operational losses can be carried forward for up to nine consecutive assessment years, and the provision is reported to survive new investment and equity restructuring. A loss that was never recorded cleanly, in the right period with documents behind it, is a deduction you will struggle to use in year six.
• The reporting relief is priced in access. Startups that give the tax authority read-only digital access to a live accounting system have been given relief from periodic reporting, with the annual return still due. Read that condition again. It assumes cloud accounting, kept current, clean enough that you would let a tax officer look at it on any Tuesday.

Five things worth checking

1. Are you registered? The exemption follows registration with the NBR, not just being young and technology-flavoured. If you never registered under the startup sandbox, the zero rate is not yours yet.
2. Does your ledger produce a turnover figure that reconciles to your bank, bKash and Nagad statements, month by month?
3. Are your losses recorded in the period they happened, with documents, so the nine-year carry-forward is actually usable?
4. Could you grant read-only access to your accounting system tomorrow without a cleanup first? If the answer is no, that is information.
5. Is someone watching the BDT 100 crore line as you grow, so that crossing it is a plan and not a surprise?

Where we stop

We do not register startups with the NBR, we do not file returns, and we do not give tax opinions. Those go to a licensed firm and we say so on every page of this site. What we do is keep the records all of this stands on: turnover you can prove, losses you can use, and books clean enough to show.

If your records are behind, cleaning up the backlog is where this starts. If you are early and want the finance side built properly from day one, that is the setup work.