The National Board of Revenue is going to set a strategic plan today to achieve its revenue collection target for the current fiscal year of 2014-15 in the backdrop of a significant shortfall in collection in the last fiscal year, NBR officials said.
They said that the NBR fell short of its revised target by around Tk 4,500 crore in the FY 2013-14 as the VAT and income tax wings of the revenue board failed to achieve the target set for the year.
In this context, the revenue board called a meeting to prepare the plan and invited all its commissioners of the three wings— income tax, value-added tax and customs.
The NBR asked its field officials to prepare strategies on how to achieve the sector-wise revenue collection target for the year.
At the meeting, NBR high-ups will evaluate the strategies to be placed at the meeting and finalise it along with giving instructions to its field offices.
‘Strategic plan may be prepared focusing some areas including collection of advance income tax from various sectors like registration of land and apartments, house rent, surcharge from different sectors, settling disputes and collection of overdue taxes and widening the tax net,’ a high official of the NBR told New Age.
He said that the revenue board would also emphasize on preventing tax evasion, particularly by the large
taxpayers including corporate business houses, and increasing VAT collection by brining more businesses under VAT net.
The government set a revenue collection target for the NBR at Tk 1,49,720 crore for the current fiscal year.
Of which, income tax wing will have to collect the highest Tk 57,500 crore, VAT wing Tk 55,580 crore and customs wing will have to collect Tk 36,680 crore.
According to the provisional data of the NBR, the revenue board managed to collect Tk 1,20,548 crore in July-June period of the last fiscal year against the target of Tk 1,25,000 crore.
The collection, however, may increase somewhat after final calculation as few more hundred crore Taka may come from some sectors including travel taxes, officials said.
They said that the NBR was still trying to collect its dues from the state-owned entities to narrow the gap.
According to the data, VAT wing lagged behind by Tk 3,130 crore as it collected only Tk 43,230 crore agaist its target of Tk 46,850 crore for the period.
Income tax wing fell short of Tk 7,63 crore as it collected Tk 43,596 crore against the target of Tk 44,360 crore while customs wing exceeded its target by Tk 360 crore last year.
Customs wing collected Tk 33,230 crore against its target of Tk 32,870 crore set for the year.
Initially, the government had set revenue collection target for NBR at Tk 1,36,090 crore which was latter downsized to Tk 1,25,000 crore following repeated requests made by the NBR.
Officials said that the NBR failed to achieve the target mainly because of sluggish business activities due to political turmoil in the first half of last fiscal year and uncertainties in later half, decline in profits of banks and cut in tax at source on export of RMG items.
-With New Age input
