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If your business still had old hard-copy VAT returns sitting outside the online system past 30 June 2026, you’re not alone — and you need to deal with it now, because online VAT filing is no longer optional. From July 2026, NBR completely did away with manual VAT returns: every registered business must file through the e-VAT portal using Mushak 9.1, with no paper fallback. If your account wasn’t fully migrated before the deadline, it’s already affecting what you can and can’t do on the portal. What NBR actually changed Under the old system, hard-copy VAT returns filed at a VAT Commissionerate were typed into the e-VAT system manually by NBR staff at the Central Processing Centre — a slow process that often left taxpayers hit with automatic interest and penalties simply because their old paper return hadn’t been entered yet. To fix this, NBR issued a circular on 5 January 2026 introducing a new “Hard Copy Return Entry” sub-module, letting taxpayers enter their own previously-submitted paper returns directly into e-VAT, without penalty or interest, as long as the original paper return had been filed on time under Section 64 of the VAT and Supplementary Duty Act, 2012. The original window to do this closed on 31 March 2026. Because a large number of businesses still hadn’t migrated their records, NBR extended it once, to 30 June 2026, in a press notice issued in early June. That extension was explicitly tied to the bigger shift: online VAT return submission became compulsory for everyone from July 2026 onward. What happens if your paper returns still aren’t in the system NBR was specific about the consequences for businesses that missed the revised deadline. Your closing balance, as it stood in May 2026, gets frozen, meaning no further adjustments can be made against it going forward. On top of that, until all of your historical returns are entered into e-VAT, you’re not eligible to submit a VAT refund claim, since the system requires a complete return history before it will process one. If you’ve noticed your current-account balance on the portal looking “stuck,” or a refund application going nowhere, this is very likely why. This isn’t a purely academic problem. Since the transition, business associations have publicly flagged that the shift from manual to digital VAT filing has come with real friction — technical glitches, data mismatches between old paper records and the online system, and extra verification steps that slow down routine filing. If your business is dealing with a frozen balance on top of those general teething problems, it compounds quickly. What to do now First, check your actual status on the e-VAT portal (vat.gov.bd) rather than assuming. Log in and look at whether your historical returns show as entered, and whether your closing balance is flagged as frozen. Second, if you still have unfiled paper returns, contact your VAT circle office directly to ask whether late entry is still possible on a case-by-case basis; NBR circulars in Bangladesh are sometimes followed by administrative accommodations even after a published deadline closes, but this is not guaranteed and needs to be confirmed with your circle office rather than assumed. Third, if a refund is sitting blocked because of an incomplete return history, get your full return record reconciled and entered before resubmitting the claim — a partial fix won’t unlock it. Going forward, ongoing monthly compliance also has to happen entirely online now. Mushak 9.1 returns are generally expected by the 15th of the following month, and the portal will flag late submissions and mismatched figures automatically, which means the old habit of “sorting it out later” carries a real, immediate cost under the new system in a way it didn’t before. None of this is a one-person, one-afternoon fix if your VAT history has gaps — reconstructing old paper filings, matching them against what NBR’s system expects, and following up with your circle office takes someone who does this regularly. Need help getting your VAT account unfrozen and compliant? If your closing balance is frozen, your refund is stuck, or you’re just not confident your historical returns are fully reflected in e-VAT, TZA can review your VAT account, handle the paperwork with your circle office, and get your ongoing Mushak 9.1 filing running smoothly under the new online-only system. Reach out to Tareq Zunayed Advisory at tzaccounting.com Call: +8801830486833 Email: info@tzaccounting.com And we’ll take it from there.