Any business leader who has ever attempted to introduce a new method, technology, or sales tactic to disrupt the status quo in an existing industry understands the pushback and complexities one is bound to encounter.
Now, try to imagine facing those same challenges in a completely foreign market where industry standards, public expectations, and a vastly different consumer market all serve as significant challenges. This is exactly what NOCHALLENGE Technology has been working towards with their proprietary software product bdtax.com.bd, the first ever self-guided tax filing service in the Bangladesh market. Following in the footsteps of Turbo Tax and H&R Block in Western markets, bdtax.com.bd aims to streamline the tax filing process and disrupt the antiquated filing system that currently exists in developing nations.
In fairness, to say that the Bangladeshi market is completely foreign to NOCHALLENGE would be somewhat false. Our CEO, Zulfikar Ali, is originally from Dhaka, Bangladesh, a city of 17 million in a country of nearly 157 million. Relocating to the United States for college in 1997, and becoming a US citizen in 2015, Ali remains an active observer and participant in Bangladeshi business, culture, and politics.
It’s not just our personal ties to Bangladesh that started us down this path. With a GDP that grew over 7% last year, and a government that welcomes foreign investment to their budding economy, Bangladesh is hungry for growth opportunities. One factor that hinders a more rapid growth to the country’s economy and infrastructure, is a burdensome tax system.
The Problem
Currently fewer than 4% of Bangladeshi citizens file taxes annually. This is obviously a problem for a country trying to become more structurally sound to welcome investments, both foreign and domestic. This problem is compounded by the way in which Bangladeshi’s are asked to file their taxes.
Tax forms must first be retrieved from a government office. Those forms are then typically taken to a tax preparer. One must sit with a tax preparer, answering pertinent questions until complete. Of course this is not free; upon completion there is a fee of approximately $100 U.S. dollars. In a country where the average personal income hovers around $1,500 U.S. dollars, this is a substantial cost. Upon payment, those forms must then be hand delivered to a government office by a deadline.
The Solution
This year the Bangladeshi Government made changes to their tax code and also concerted their effort to make sure that all corporations in the country are paying their taxes properly. All the more reason for NOCHALLENGE’s entrepreneurial spirit to take hold and offer both private citizens and corporations alike a solution to streamline the tax filing process.
bdtax.com.bd – Dashboard
Our software bdtax.com.bd, now in Beta and currently available at no cost to the user, will look very familiar to many westerners. Laid out in an easy to follow fashion, the user simply follows along, clicking easy to understand icons and answering direct questions, in either English or Bangla, about their living and employment situation. The progress towards completion is tracked at the top of the screen, and once complete the user has a form that they can then submit to the government without the time or financial commitment to a tax preparer. A process that once could take weeks to complete can now be done in less than an hour.
There are still hurdles to clear, and NOCHALLENGE Technology is working tirelessly to make our software available to the entire country. A social media campaign has resulted in over 3,000 new users within just a few weeks, and we continue to work with the Bangladeshi government to secure a partnership to electronically submit tax data in 2017.
We firmly believe that, “because we’ve always done it this way,” is almost never a good enough reason to keep doing something. Our technology solutions thrive when we are given an opportunity to examine a process, learn it in depth, and then create a custom solution than can revolutionize your practice.
We would love to start a conversation about how we can do just that for your business.