Department of Revenue and Customs
From BhutanWiki, the people's encyclopedia of Bhutan · politics · Reviewed
The Department of Revenue and Customs (DRC) is the tax and customs administration of Bhutan, a department of the Ministry of Finance responsible for assessing and collecting the taxes of the Royal Government — income taxes, the Goods and Services Tax, excise and customs duties — and for administering the country's customs frontier.[1]
In FY 2024-25 the DRC administered the collection of Nu 63.9 billion in gross revenue — Nu 62.2 billion (~USD 710 million) net of refunds, equal to 20.56 per cent of GDP — and its annual National Revenue Report is the authoritative public record of what the Bhutanese state collects and from where.[2]
Organisation
The department is led by a Director General (Sonam Jamtsho as of 2025) and organised into divisions for Revenue Accounts and Audit, Customs and Excise, Tax Administration, Revenue Intelligence, Sales Tax, and — since the 2026 reform — GST.[2]
As of June 2025 the DRC employed 508 staff: 48 at headquarters in Thimphu, 14 at the Liaison and Transit Office in Kolkata — which handles Bhutan's trade transiting Indian ports — and the remainder across eight Regional Revenue and Customs Offices (RRCOs). Phuentsholing, the main land port with India, is the largest station with 111 staff, followed by Thimphu (70), Paro (62), Samtse (57), Samdrup Jongkhar (56), Gelephu (53), Mongar (21) and Bumthang (16); each RRCO covers a cluster of dzongkhags.[2]
Role in the 2026 tax reform
The DRC built and operates the administrative machinery of the 2026 reform package — the GST, the new income tax and the excise regime — including taxpayer registration, which grew roughly sixfold to about 4,000 collection agents in the GST's first months. The department waived penalties during the initial rollout in favour of awareness programmes, then moved to enforcement from July 2026.[3] From FY 2024-25 it restructured its reporting on the IMF's Government Finance Statistics Manual (GFSM 2014), aligning Bhutan's revenue accounts with international statistical standards.[2]
See also
References
Related articles
Know something about this topic? Edit this article or . Anonymous contributions welcome — no account required.