The National Board of Revenue on Sunday instructed its field offices to take all out efforts to achieve revenue collection targets for the current fiscal year of 2013-14 in the remaining four months, officials said. They said NBR fell short of target by around Tk 10,000 crore in the first seven months of the current fiscal year. At a meeting organised for reviewing overall situation of revenue collection, the revenue board instructed the commissioners of income tax, customs and value-added tax to meet the deficit through resolving pending cases and collection of outstanding revenue, they said.
Field offices were also asked to find out more new sectors, prevent tax evasion and expand tax net for maximizing revenue collection, they added.
As the revenue board is yet to get revised target from the finance ministry, NBR chairman Ghulam Hussain asked its subordinate offices to work for achieving targets set for entire year.
At the meeting held at NBR conference room, Ghulam Hussain instructed the commissioners to avoid aggressive attitudes with taxpayers rather they should be innovative and tactful in collecting taxes and duties.
He also asked customs houses including Chittagong and Mongla customs to expedite the auction process and dispose of all auctionable goods and containers left abandoned at different sea and land ports.
According to NBR data, there are thousands of cases related to income tax, VAT and customs duties which remained pending at different courts involving more than Tk 30,000 crore in revenue.
Of the amount, the highest around Tk 24,000 crore is involved with disputes related to customs duties, around Tk 5,000 with income tax related disputes and remaining is connected with VAT related disputes.
According to NBR, only at Chittagong port, more than 16,000 tonnes of items including vehicles, containers and cargos remained waiting for auction while several hundred cars in Mongla port.
‘The revenue board already lagged behind in achieving its revenue collection target by huge amounts which would not be possible to fill up by regular activities. So the field offices were asked to expedite to resolve pending cases and collect due revenues,’ a high official who attended the meeting told New Age.
In July-January period, the NBR fell short of target by Tk 9,751.45 crore as all the three wings of the revenue board failed to achieve their respective targets set for the months, he said.
Though the NBR requested the government for revising the target for entire fiscal year by slashing Tk 16,000 crore, the finance ministry is yet to provide the revised target to NBR, he said.
So the NBR chairman asked the field offices to work hard to achieve the target of collecting Tk 1,36,090 crore set for the entire fiscal year, he added.
The revenue board emphasised on expediting alternative dispute resolution mechanism for settling disputes along with regular procedures in courts.
In case of income tax, the NBR said to boost up door-to-door survey activities, impose fine on defaulters, expedite audit and intelligence programmes and ensure enforcement of rules and regulations for ensuring tax collection.
VAT wing has been instructed to identify sectors potential for VAT collection along with other regular activities.
-With New Age input
