Tax Collection Strategy
House owners, foreigners to come under NBR watch
The National Board of Revenue on Thursday instructed its field officials to intensify their efforts for brining all eligible house owners, businesses, high-income professionals and foreigners under the tax net and step up monitoring to prevent tax evasion by those groups, officials said. At a meeting with all its field-level commissioners, the NBR also asked them to focus on corporate houses, big companies and other sectors which are generally considered as risky in terms of tax evasion, they said.
In the current year, the revenue board will also focus on expanding value-added tax net, preventing tax evasion through under invoicing at import stage, increasing collection of tax at source and identifying untapped areas to increase revenue collection, they said.
Sweetmeat shops, beauty parlours and some other areas will also come under special monitoring in the coming days, according to the officials.
The revenue board called the meeting to fix a strategic plan to achieve the revenue collection target set for the current fiscal year of 2014-15 at Tk 1,49,720 crore in the backdrop of a huge shortfall of around Tk 4,500 crore in revenue collection in the last FY of 2013-14.
NBR members, commissioners of the three wings of the NBR— income tax, value-added tax and customs—and other high officials attended the meeting chaired by NBR chairman Ghulam Hussain.
‘The revenue board has already identified more than 1.72 lakh house owners and businesses as eligible to pay tax which do not pay tax. NBR chairman instructed for brining them under tax net and identifying more tax evading house and business owners,’ said a high official after the meeting.
There are thousands of foreigners working in Bangladesh, particularly in readymade garment, IT and other manufacturing industries, but they leave the country without paying taxes, he said.
Foreigners will be kept under special monitoring, the meeting decided.
At the meeting, commissioners of income tax, VAT and customs placed separate work-plans for their respective offices.
As part of work-plans, commissioners submitted sector-wise strategies describing how they will achieve the target and how much revenue they will collect from different sectors to meet the target for the current year, officials said.
Evaluating the work-plans submitted by the commissioners, the NBR high-ups directed the field officials for taking all-out efforts to achieve the revenue collection target, they said.
Based on the meeting, a strategic plan will be finalised and sent to the field offices soon, they said.
NBR chairman asked the income tax officials to increase deduction of tax at source from different sectors like registration of land and apartments, house rent, mineral water, and mobile phone import and production following the provisions of the Income Tax Ordinance-1984 in a bid to increase the percentage of AIT in total income tax collection.
Currently, the share of AIT in income tax is around 54 per cent which is more than 90 per cent in developed countries.
Customs officials were asked to ensure proper assessment of imported goods at customs houses and customs stations to prevent duty evasion by importers through under-invoicing.
In a general instruction, NBR chairman asked the field officials to settle disputes and collect overdue taxes.
According to the NBR statistics, around Tk 30,000 crore remained stuck at different courts for years due to cases filed by taxpayers, mostly businesses.
Of the amount, Tk 24,000 crore involved with disputes related to customs duties, Tk 4,000 crore with income tax related disputes and remaining were connected with VAT-related cases.
-With New Age input
