The National Board of Revenue has recommended that the government should not accept a request from India seeking travel tax waiver for its nationals, officials said.
They said that the revenue board could not exempt any citizen of any particular country as it collected the tax from all outgoing passengers. The Indian government recently made the appeal through foreign ministry seeking travel tax exemption arguing that Bangladesh should not impose the tax on their nationals as the country does not impose such tax.
Bangladesh foreign ministry and home ministry also gave positive nod for withdrawing the tax saying that India raises the issue frequently at bilateral meetings between the two countries.
But within the existing law, there is no scope to waive the tax for nationals of any particular country, said a NBR note sent to the ministries in September.
The government will also incur loss of huge amount of revenue if such exemption is given to the country as every year a large number of Indian citizen visit Bangladesh on various purposes, he said.
Every passenger traveling to SAARC countries including India by air has to pay Tk 1,200 as travel tax, Tk 500 for a passenger traveling by land routes and Tk 800 for the passenger traveling by waterways.
According to NBR statistics, Bangladesh earned Tk 919.83 crore in travel tax in the last fiscal year of 2013-2014.
There is no latest data regarding how many Indian citizens visit Bangladesh every year but according to Bangladesh Tourism Corporation around 1.45 lakh Indians visited the country in 2011.
According to the Determination of Foreign Travel Tax Rate Rules-2014 which was initially introduced in 2004 in the country, the tax will be applicable for traveling to any country.
In the current fiscal year, the government increased the rate of travel tax with effect from July 1.
Travel tax was increased to Tk 1,200 from Tk 1,000 for international airline passengers traveling to SAARC countries.
The tax was fixed to Tk 4,000 from Tk 3,000 for passengers travelling to North and South America, Australia, New Zealand, Europe, Africa, China, Japan, Hong Kong, North and South Korea, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia and Taiwan.
It was increased to Tk 3,000 from Tk 2,500 for traveling to rest of the countries.
Travel agents, airlines or other ticketing agencies collect the tax along with ticket fare and then deposit the tax to government exchequer while customs authorities collect the tax in cash at land ports, NBR officials said.
-With New Age input
