Office of the Controller General of Accounts has found a huge gap in the figure of income tax collected by the National Board of Revenue in the last fiscal year of 2013-14, officials told New Age on Sunday. They said that such mismatch in revenue accounts created an embarrassing situation for the revenue board and made them highly concerned as the CGA office pointed out such gap in previous FY of 2012-13.
The CGA office showed Tk 4,841.76 crore less in income tax collection than the record of the NBR for the fiscal year, they added.
According to NBR statistics, it collected Tk 43,207.27 crore in income tax in the FY 14 while CGA office said that income tax collection was Tk 38,365.51 crore.
The biggest difference in income tax collection identified at Tk 3,552.78 crore at tax Zone-2 in Dhaka followed by tax Zone-8 in Dhaka with Tk 706.27 crore and tax Zone-4 in Dhaka with Tk 357.34 crore.
In FY 13, CGA office found a difference of Tk 5,737 crore in overall revenue collection with the record of the NBR.
‘Now the revenue board is trying to identify the reasons behind the difference between the government’s revenue collection office and accounts office,’ a high official of the NBR told New Age.
The revenue board should spot the reasons specifically and reconcile it with the CGA calculation, otherwise it may create confusion among policymakers and taxpayers and create chance of misuse of revenue earnings by the taxmen, he said.
Earlier in 2009, the revenue board had decided to publish reconciled data of revenue collection to remove mismatch in statistics released by NBR and CGA office.
The revenue board had also formed a committee consisting of officials from NBR, CGA office and Bangladesh Bank to look after the matter but the move did not work out.
Taxmen said that the mismatch in figures had been continuing mainly due to problems in compilation and documentation methods of collected revenue by the two agencies of the government.
They also doubted that some field offices might have exaggerated the actual collection to fulfill their collection target set by the revenue board.
The mismatch may also arise because of delay in receiving pay orders by CGA office and double counting or duplication of treasury challan in tax offices, they added.
There are also some allegations against the NBR officials that they delay to deposit the revenue to the government exchequer and earn profit to keep it in their bank accounts in an illegal nexus with bank officials.
The CGA office usually calculates the revenue based on the documents like treasury challan and documents received from the banks.
On the other hand, taxmen calculate revenue based on various sources including book adjustment, memo and notifications issued by different government organisations as well as treasury challan and pay orders.
Research and statistics wing of the revenue board has recently sought explanation for the mismatch from the income tax wing in this connection.
An official of income tax wing said that they had also instructed its field offices seeking explanation and opinion on authenticity of the data.
Research and statistics wing will sit with the tax offices concerned on January 29 to discuss the issue and find out a way for ensuring coordination in publishing authentic tax related data, he said.
Officials said that mismatch were found in almost every year because of lack of coordination between the two government offices, lack of automation and flaws in collection procedures of the revenue board and corruption of the revenue and bank officials.
-With New Age input
