Retures Submission By Nov Deadline
Income tax collection drops by Tk 200cr
Collection of income tax paid through the tax returns dropped surprisingly by more than Tk 200 crore within the NBR-set deadline in the current fiscal year of 2014-2015 compared with that of last year, according to the data of the National Board of Revenue. Despite the number of income tax returns increased by more than 5,000 in the current fiscal year, the tax collection declined to Tk 1,390 crore from Tk 1,600 crore in last year, the data showed.
In this context, the revenue board has recently asked its field offices to explain the possible reasons behind the fall of income tax collection from the sector, officials said.
According to NBR data, 8.33 lakh people, mostly individual taxpayers, submitted income tax returns by 30 November, the scheduled deadline for filing returns in the current fiscal year.
In last year, 8.28 lakh taxpayers filed income tax returns within the extended deadline of December 31.
In the first week of December, the income tax wing of the revenue board sent letters to the commissioners of 31 income tax zones to explain the reasons to the board, a high official of the NBR told New Age on Wednesday.
He said that the commissioners were asked to select 100 income tax returns submitted by the taxpayers to their respective zones this year and scrutinze those to find out the reasons of not increasing the amount of tax compared with that of last year.
They were given seven working days to send the report, he said.
‘We have already received reports from some field offices. The revenue board will analyse the reasons after getting reports from all offices,’ he said.
The revenue board should know why the collection of income tax dropped, if there are any incidences of tax evasion by taxpayers or lax in monitoring by taxmen so that it could take preventive measures in future, he said.
Around 10 per cent of the total income tax is collected during the submission of the tax returns while around 52 per cent is deducted as tax at source and more than 30 per cent is collected as advance income tax, he added.
Officials said that usually the amount of tax was supposed to go up in line with the increased number of income tax returns.
On the other hand, in most cases the individual taxpayers pay income tax in increased amount every year, they said.
But the actual scenario is different and unsatisfactory, they said.
Taxmen from field offices said that they were yet to confirm why the collection dropped this year.
Last year, many company taxpayers submitted income tax returns and paid tax by December 31 while many of them are yet to submit their returns this year.
For company taxpayers, the deadline for filing returns is December 31.
Company taxpayers paid large amount of tax with their returns which might be reflected in total collection last year, they said.
Taxpayers may also claim refund of the additional tax which they paid last year in advance.
The amount in income tax with returns may increase by the end of December after submission of returns by company taxpayers.
According to NBR data, there are another 1.95 lakh taxpayers who filed time petition seeking time for filing returns to the NBR.
In last FY, around 1.80 people submitted time petition who filed returns later.
-With New Age input
