The National Board of Revenue has termed the revenue collection target of Tk 1,36,000 crore fixed by the government for the upcoming 2013-2014 financial year unrealistic and unachievable and recommended to fix it at Tk 1,25,000 crore.
‘Under the current political unrest and downtrend in macroeconomic situation, it will be impossible for the revenue board to achieve the target set by the government,’ NBR chairman Ghulam Hussain said at a pre-budget discussion with the Economic Reporters Forum in the capital on Wednesday.
In separate letters, the revenue board has already informed the prime minister, finance minister and the parliamentary standing committee concerned about the situation and requested to downsize the target, he said.
Along with political unrest prevailing in the country, overall macroeconomic factors are not in favour of higher growth target for revenue collection as export, import and business activities are declining, and value of the dollar is getting depreciated against the taka, he explained.
At the Sixth Five-Year Plan, the government set a revenue target for the NBR at Tk 1,36,000 crore with 21 per cent growth over the previous year but the NBR said they could hardly achieve the target of Tk 1,25,000 crore with 13 per cent growth.
‘It is up to the government now whether it will impose the huge burden on the NBR or not, but in our part we can say that it is not achievable,’ Ghulam said.
About the expanding tax net, he said that verifying the taxpaying status of around 50,000 house and apartment owners in the Dhaka city, the revenue board had already identified around 27,000 house and apartment owners in Dhaka
who do not pay tax and do not have even tax identification numbers.
The tax evading house owners will be brought to the book soon, he said.
People can get a fake TIN just spending very little money, he said. ‘So they can easily avoid paying tax for their houses,’ Ghulam said.
The NBR is also considering introducing a provision of providing tax assessment document of the previous year while buying houses, apartments or any other property, he said adding that currently anyone could buy house only providing TINs.
He said the NBR had also started another survey on business entity located in the metropolitan cities, district, upazila and other growth centre in the country to find out value-added tax-evading businesses and shop owners.
According to a NBR study, there are around 5 lakh VAT-payable business entities in the country but only 60,000 business houses pay VAT.
As a move to revive the ailing capital markets in the country, Ghulam said that the government was considering providing some policy support in the upcoming budget. He, however, did not disclose the measures.
The government is also working to make savings instruments more attractive through giving some incentives to savers, he said.
At the meeting, representatives of the ERF placed some recommendations for the next revenue budget.
NBR members Farid Uddin and Syed Aminul Karim, ERF president Khawaja Mainuddin and secretary Abdur Rahim Harmachi, among others, spoke at the meeting.
-With New Age input
