The most heavily taxed imports: why a car reaches 1,007.5%
The most heavily taxed thing you can legally import into Bangladesh is a large-engined motor car. The total tax incidence is 1,007.5%. On a car with an assessable value of BDT 5,000,000 the tax is BDT 50,375,000 — and the importer pays 5,503,750 in total for a vehicle worth five million.
That is not an error in our data. It is the published figure, and it is reproduced exactly by NBR's own duty calculator. This guide explains which goods sit at the top of the tariff, how the arithmetic produces numbers that large, and what the distribution looks like across all 7,469 lines.
The ten most heavily taxed lines
| Code | Goods | CD | SD | RD | TTI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 87033361 | Motor car, CBU, large engine | 25% | 500% | 25% | 1,007.5% |
| 87033351 | Reconditioned motor car, CBU, large engine | 25% | 500% | 25% | 1,007.5% |
| 87032441 | Motor car, CBU | 25% | 500% | 25% | 1,007.5% |
| 87032431 | Reconditioned motor car, CBU | 25% | 500% | 25% | 1,007.5% |
| 87043116 | Double cabin pickup, CBU | 25% | 500% | 5% | 860.5% |
| 87033362 | Motor car, CKD, large engine | 25% | 500% | 5% | 860.5% |
| 87060039 | Chassis fitted with engines | 25% | 350% | 25% | 731.88% |
| 22083000 | Whiskey | 25% | 350% | 5% | 636.63% |
| 22086000 | Vodka | 25% | 350% | 5% | 636.63% |
| 24049190 | Nicotine products, other | 25% | 350% | 5% | 621.63% |
Two categories dominate: passenger vehicles and alcohol and tobacco. Nothing else comes close.
Supplementary duty is what does it
Look at the CD column. It is 25% on every line in that table — the same customs duty a smartphone pays. Customs duty is not what makes these goods expensive.
Supplementary duty is. At 500% it is twenty times the customs duty, and because SD is charged on the value after CD and RD have been added, and VAT and advance tax are then charged on a base that includes the SD, the effect compounds three times over.
Follow BDT 100 of car through the cascade:
| Step | Base | Rate | Tax |
|---|---|---|---|
| Customs duty | 100.00 | 25% | 25.00 |
| Regulatory duty | 100.00 | 25% | 25.00 |
| Supplementary duty | 150.00 | 500% | 750.00 |
| VAT | 900.00 | 15% | 135.00 |
| Advance tax | 900.00 | 7.5% | 67.50 |
| AIT | 100.00 | 5% | 5.00 |
| Total | 1,007.50 |
The SD line alone contributes 750 of the 1,007.5. And notice the VAT base: 900, not 100. VAT at 15% produces 135 — more than the entire customs duty — purely because supplementary duty inflated the base beneath it. This is why a large SD figure is so much more punishing than the same number expressed as customs duty.
How rare are these rates?
Out of 7,411 ad-valorem lines:
| Total tax incidence | Lines | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Under 10% | 152 | 2.1% |
| 10% to 20% | 320 | 4.3% |
| 20% to 40% | 3,437 | 46.4% |
| 40% to 60% | 482 | 6.5% |
| 60% to 90% | 1,873 | 25.3% |
| 90% to 150% | 898 | 12.1% |
| Over 150% | 249 | 3.4% |
So the extremes are genuinely exceptional. 713 lines exceed 100%, 143 exceed 200%, and only 53 exceed 500% — seven tenths of one per cent of the tariff. Nearly half of everything sits between 20% and 40%.
If your goods are coming out above 100%, it is worth checking the classification before accepting it. You are either importing something the state actively discourages, or the code is wrong.
Why these particular goods
High supplementary duty is not a revenue measure first. It is used for three purposes, and the top of the tariff shows all three:
- Discouraging consumption. Alcohol at 636.63% and tobacco at 621.63% are taxed to suppress demand, not to fund the budget.
- Protecting the local industry. Compare a fully built car at 1,007.5% with the same vehicle imported in kit form — 87033362 CKD at 860.5%. The gap exists to make local assembly worthwhile. See CBU, CKD and SKD explained.
- Conserving foreign currency. Private cars are a visible target in a country managing its import bill.
The same logic explains the reconditioned-car trade, which is large in Bangladesh precisely because the duty is calculated on a depreciated value — how reconditioned car duty works covers that in detail.
One thing these figures are not
None of the lines in this guide is a specific duty. Every number above is a genuine percentage of assessable value.
That distinction matters, because elsewhere in the tariff you will meet figures like 90,000 in a duty column, which are taka amounts per unit rather than rates. Our pages mark those with a dagger (†) and publish no TTI percentage for them. A car at 1,007.5% really is 1,007.5%; a television at 90,000 is ninety thousand taka.
Before you budget
- Find the exact eight-digit code. Within chapter 8703 the engine capacity bands move the rate by hundreds of points.
- Check whether SD applies at all. It is zero on most of the tariff; where it is not, it dominates everything else.
- Remember the cascade. A 500% SD does not add 500 points to the total — it adds considerably more once VAT and AT are calculated on top of it.
- Rates move in June. Vehicle and luxury lines are the most frequently adjusted in the budget — see how the June budget changes duty rates.