Stockmarket has three good news

The proposed national budget for the 2025–26 fiscal year has three pieces of good news for the stockmarket.

The interim government has proposed widening the gap in corporate tax paid by listed and non-listed firms from 5 percentage points to 7.5 percentage points in order to attract companies with good performance records to go public.

Apart from this, Finance Minister Salehuddin Ahmed today proposed lowering the source advance tax on turnover in stock brokerage to 0.03 percent from the existing 0.05 percent.

The government decided to reduce the tax on trading to meet the demands of stock brokerages.

There is good news for merchant banks too. The finance adviser proposed reducing the corporate tax rate on merchant banks to 27.5 percent from the existing 37.5 percent.

Meanwhile, in order to raise the tax gap between listed and non-listed firms, the government proposed increasing the corporate tax rate for non-listed firms to 27.5 percent from fiscal year 2026-27, which was previously 25 percent under several conditions.

Among listed firms, which have issued at least 10 percent shares through initial public offering will enjoy the low tax benefit.

While the proposed budget provided tax benefits to stock brokerage firms and merchant banks directly, the Bangladesh Securities and Exchange Commission reduced the maintenance fee of beneficiary owner's accounts to Tk 150 from Tk 450 last week.

So, this year's proposed budget is bringing good news for almost all the stakeholders of the stockmarket.