The National Board of Revenue has taken an initiative to introduce submission of income tax returns and its processing online by early 2014 to ease the tax payment
process and reduce hassle for taxpayers, said NBR officials.
The revenue board will also establish taxpayers service centres such as help desk and call centres for providing services to taxpayers under an automation programme titled ‘strengthening governance management project’, they said.
‘Individual and corporate taxpayers will be able to submit their income tax returns online and all other processes including assessment of returns, tax calculation, payment, audit, providing tax clearance certificates will be done online under the programme,’ a high official involved in the project told New Age on Tuesday.
He said that the NBR was going to establish a central processing centre to analyse and process the tax returns that would be submitted manually by the taxpayers.
Once the automation becomes fully operational, total tax payment process which includes issuance of taxpayer identification number, submission of tax returns and its assessment, tax payments and refunds transfer will be done online, he said.
According to the NBR plan, the necessary preparation including setting up of infrastructure and developing of software will be completed by December this year.
The NBR will try to introduce the e-filing module by January 2014 and the system will be fully operational by early 2015.
Currently, taxpayers are able only to pay tax online.
But in an absence of online returns submission, e-payment system could not attract taxpayers’ attention at an expected level, another NBR official said.
‘Taxpayers are to visit tax offices to submit returns. So, they feel discouraged to pay tax online,’ he said.
Taxpayers alleged that in tax offices they faced problems as officials wanted bribe from them and delayed the processing of tax return.
Taxpayers need to go to tax offices several times for completing tax payment process.
In 2009, the NBR first launched the e-filing for large taxpayers unit.
Later the facility was extended to tax zone-8 in Dhaka.
Taxpayers complained that it was nothing but e-mailing all documents to tax offices as they needed to come to the tax offices to take receipts.
After introduction of e-filing of tax returns, taxpayers will not need to visit tax offices as they will be able to file their returns through web portal from any place and receive receipts through the system, the NBR official said.
The NBR, however, is also aware that all taxpayers will not be able to take the advantage of technology and many will submit their tax returns in hard copies, he said.
‘So, we are going to establish CPC in Dhaka to analyse and process those manual returns. We will digitise the returns by capturing image and transforming manual data to electronic one. Then we will return the hard copies to the respective taxpayers,’ he said.
The NBR will also set up taxpayers service centre such as help desk and call centres to provide direct answers to taxpayers’ questions and solve tax-related problems directly and over mobile phones, he said.
These centres will also assist taxpayers in preparing returns, calculating tax liabilities and understanding tax payment-related problems, he said adding that the services would be available during office hours.
Under the project, all the income tax offices including 649 circle offices across the country will be connected online.
This web-based system will also be integrated with customs and value-added tax administration, e-challans and e-payment mechanism of Bangladesh Bank, other banks, land authorities and Bangladesh Road Transport Authority for information of land registration and vehicle registration.
-With New Age input
