Almost all house owners and businessmen detected as suspected tax dodgers have ignored the order of the National Board of Revenue for paying income tax while only less than 1,000 of them submitted income tax returns till date, NBR chairman Ghulam Hussain said on Wednesday. He said that the revenue board through its door-to-door survey-2012 detected 1.66 lakh house owners and businessmen who did not pay taxes and even did not have taxpayer identification numbers.
‘Of them, only less than 1,000 people responded to our order for submitting income tax returns,’ he said.
Now, the revenue board will take tough action against tax evading people and that will be a very bad news for them, he said.
Tax officials will assess taxes calculating the year of construction of the house and year of business and issue demand note for paying the taxes, the NBR chairman said, adding that they will have to pay for previous years for which they did not pay.
For apartment owners, the NBR will collect cost of construction of apartment from the developers and based on that taxmen will impose tax, he added.
He said that London-based International Growth Centre had also conducted a survey on around 80 markets in Dhaka to find out if businessman paid tax or not.
‘We will cross check IGC’s findings with our own findings and take steps to bring tax evading businessmen under the tax net,’ Ghulam said.
The NBR will also go for a motivational campaign with the help of IGC to motivate shopkeepers to pay tax, he said.
The revenue board had set a target to enlist 2.57 lakh new taxpayers from the survey conducted across the country from December 2012 to January 2014.
According to NBR data, of the suspected tax evaders, 1.14 lakh or 68.35 per cent are businessmen and 45,601 or 27.38 per cent are house owners and 7,100 are owners of other establishments.
Of them, the revenue board issued taxpayer identification number against 75,554 house owners and businessmen, the data showed.
Of the 75,554 house and shop owners, around 18,000 or 23.53 per cent people are house owners, 54,700 or 72.38 per cent are businessmen, the data showed.
Officials said that though the tax officials issued TINs to the people they were not submitting returns ignoring NBR direction.
They said that most of the tax evaders spotted by the NBR survey are from Dhaka, Chittagong and Khulna cities.
-With New Age input
