Mushak 9.1: the VAT return, prepared and filed

Mushak 9.1 is the VAT return. It reports what you charged on your sales, what you paid on your purchases, and settles the difference. It is due in every tax period, including a period in which you sold nothing.

The cadence changed. Until 30 June 2026 the return was monthly, due on the 15th of the following month, and that is the deadline most published guidance still describes. Three sources report that the Finance Act 2026 made the QUARTERLY return the default from 1 July 2026, due within 15 days of the quarter end, with monthly filing available by election and due by the last day of the following month.

The structural point survives the change: the return contains no information that is not already in your registers. If closing the period is painful, the problem is upstream in how the registers are kept, not in the return itself.

As of 19 August 2026, per the Value Added Tax and Supplementary Duty Act 2012 and its Rules 2016, and the Income Tax Act 2023, as amended by the Finance Act 2026. Rates, thresholds and schedules in Bangladesh are re-issued by SRO, often mid-year, and the figures here are drawn from professional secondary sources because NBR's own site was not reachable at review time. Confirm with your VAT consultant before you rely on any figure here. NBR is the authority; this page is not.

Each block of the return traces back to a specific book. Knowing the mapping is what turns filing from a reconstruction exercise into a transcription exercise.

The return is filed on NBR's own system. No accounting product in Bangladesh submits it for you, whatever a sales deck implies.

1. 01Close the tax period in your own books first. Finish writing up the purchase and sales registers for the period. The return is a summary of the registers, so a register that is still moving produces a return you will have to amend, and an amendment invites the question the return was meant to avoid.
2. 02Total the output VAT. Sum the VAT on every taxable supply in the period from your Mushak 6.3 sales register, at the rate each supply actually carried. Exclude cancelled challans, but keep them visible in the register so the sequence still reconciles.
3. 03Total the creditable input VAT. Sum the input VAT from your Mushak 6.1 purchase register, taking only what you are entitled to claim: a valid supplier challan, a supplier BIN you have verified, and a purchase still inside the claim window.
4. 04Match the VDS certificates you hold. Enter VAT deducted at source only against the Mushak 6.6 certificates your withholding customers actually issued you. A deduction you believe happened but hold no certificate for is not a deduction you can enter.
5. 05Resolve to net payable or credit carried forward. Output VAT minus creditable input VAT and VDS gives either VAT payable for the period or a credit you carry forward. Exactly one of the two is positive.
6. 06Deposit any net VAT due before you submit. Pay the net VAT to the treasury first and keep the challan details to hand, because the return itself asks for them. Submitting first and paying afterwards leaves a return pointing at a payment that does not exist yet.
7. 07Submit on vat.gov.bd and keep the acknowledgement. Sign in with the credentials tied to your BIN, select the tax period, complete the return with the figures you prepared, submit it within 15 days of the quarter end if you file quarterly, which is now the default, or by the last day of the following month if you have opted to file monthly, and file the acknowledgement with the period's registers. Keep all of it for 5 years. Screens and labels change between releases, so follow the form in front of you rather than a screenshot from a blog.

Every one of these is cheap to find before submission and expensive to explain afterwards. Run them as a checklist in the two days before the deadline, whichever cadence you are on.

1. 01Challan sequence. Every number in the period is present, live or cancelled. A gap is the first thing anyone looks for, and it is read as a suppressed sale until you prove otherwise.
2. 02Register against ledger. Output VAT in the Mushak 6.3 sales register equals the VAT credited in your ledger for the period. A difference means a sale posted without a challan, or a challan raised without a posting.
3. 03Rate mix and adjustments. Every line at a reduced or truncated-base rate is a line entitled to carry it, and every credit or debit note ties to a document whose counterparty copy says the same thing. This is where a standard-rated supply invoiced at a truncated-base rate surfaces.
4. 04Supplier BINs. Every input-tax claim has a supplier challan with a verified BIN behind it. An unverified or lapsed BIN turns a claim into a disallowance, and you find out after you have already paid.
5. 05VDS certificates. Every figure you entered for VAT deducted at source has a Mushak 6.6 certificate in hand behind it, not a deduction you were told about.
6. 06Carry-forward and claim window. Last period's closing credit equals this period's opening credit, and no input-tax claim in the return is older than the 4-month claim window allows.

A period with no sales still requires a return. It is filed the same way and by the same date, with the supply figures at zero and any input tax you are entitled to still claimed, which is often the point: a quiet period with purchases in it can produce a credit to carry forward rather than a payment.

Skipping a nil return is the single most common compliance failure in small registered businesses, and it is treated as a failure to file rather than as an absence of activity.

The Act provides for a monetary penalty for failure to file on time and for interest on VAT paid late, and a persistent failure can put your registration itself in question. The specific amounts and rates are amended by Finance Act, so read them from the current Act rather than from any website, this one included.

The practical exposure is usually larger than the headline penalty: a late return delays the credit carried forward, complicates the next month, and puts your file in front of an officer who was not previously looking at it.

As of 19 August 2026, per the Value Added Tax and Supplementary Duty Act 2012 and its Rules 2016, and the Income Tax Act 2023, as amended by the Finance Act 2026. Rates, thresholds and schedules in Bangladesh are re-issued by SRO, often mid-year, and the figures here are drawn from professional secondary sources because NBR's own site was not reachable at review time. Confirm with your VAT consultant before you rely on any figure here. NBR is the authority; this page is not.

What a system should give you before the return falls due is a period figure you can defend: output VAT netted against creditable input VAT, with both source registers one click away so that any question about the number can be answered by opening the rows behind it.