The National Board of Revenue has taken steps to identify Bangladeshi citizens who bought homes abroad under ‘second home scheme’ of different countries to ensure tax collection from them, NBR chairman Ghulam Hussain on Wednesday said. The revenue board has started collecting data about the people from several countries where Bangladeshi people bought home with the money laundered from the country, he said at a function while launching ‘Income Tax Pocket Guide’ published by Eastern Bank Ltd in Dhaka.
‘I instructed tax officials to communicate with Malaysia, Canada, Dubai and Qatar where it is believed that many Bangladeshis bought homes or made investment,’ he said.
Tax officials will soon communicate with Malaysia for collecting names and addresses of Bangladeshi citizens having homes in the country under the second home scheme, he added.
He said that the revenue board would examine the sources of income of second home owners and if they paid taxes.
‘If the money remains untaxed, the revenue board will collect due taxes with penalty,’ he said.
The revenue board has agreements with 33 countries on exchanging taxpayers’ information.
Ghulam said that tax education and culture was most important for increasing revenue collection.
Around 62 per cent shop owners at Basundhara City Shopping Mall pay VAT while 46 per cent pay tax and the remaining neither pay VAT nor tax, he said.
He stressed the need for book-keeping to pay proper amount of tax and avoid middlemen who, according to him, sometimes caused manipulation of tax files.
The NBR chairman stressed the need for discouraging cash transaction saying that there is no necessity to issue notes above Tk 100. All transactions should be held through banking channel or credit/debit cards.
Ghulam also said that the tax administration had taken some steps such as issuing online taxpayer identification number and online income tax returns submission to reduce hassles of taxpayers in paying tax.
Taxpayers will also have to preserve the documents regarding their income and expenditures that will also help them in getting better services, he said.
EBL chief executive officer and managing director Ali Reza Iftekhar, Prothom Alo associate editor Abdul Qaiyum, among others, spoke at the function.
-With New Age input
