7 Lakh Errant Tin Holders
NBR unlikely to impose penalty in most cases
It is very unlikely that the National Board of Revenue will serve notices and impose penalty on most of the individual taxpayers who failed to submit their income tax returns for the current fiscal year, NBR officials said. According to the latest statistics of the NBR, as many as seven lakh individual taxpayers did not submit their tax returns in the FY 2013-14. Field offices of the NBR feel discouraged in serving notices to errant individual taxpayers as most of them (taxpayers) do not respond to the notices and taxmen even cannot trace many of them, NBR officials said.
They said field level taxmen were reluctant to serve notices and impose penalty as the tax remained unrealised.
According to Income Tax Ordinace-1984, there is a provision of serving notice seeking explanations for not filing income tax returns within deadline.
According to the ordinance, people having taxpayer identification number will have to file income tax returns within the deadline either she/he has taxable income or not while every company will also have to submit income tax returns.
The deputy commissioner of taxes may impose a penalty amounting to 10 per cent of his/her tax amount last year or minimum Tk 1,000 and Tk 50 for each day delay after the deadline.
Currently, there are 17.52 lakh registered TIN holders in the country. Of them, as many as nine lakh people submitted their income tax returns within the deadline of December 31, 2013 while another 1.5 lakh sought time extension from the revenue board for filing their returns.
The revenue board instructed its field offices to serve notices to non-compliant TIN holders under article 130 and to impose penalty under article 124 of the ordinance.
An official of an NBR field office told New Age that most of the regular individual taxpayers submitted their returns wherever they stayed.
‘It is difficult to trace tax dodgers as they frequently change their addresses or they provided fake addresses to us,’ he said.
He said, ‘We served many notices to many TIN holders for not submission of returns but they did not respond. Inspectors of our zone did not find the TIN holders visiting some addresses.’
Field offices also cannot enforce the regulations due to severe manpower crisis, he said.
Errant TIN holders take TINs for various purposes like receiving loans, credit cards, tender licence, trade licence and other services in line with the provision of the ordinance and they (defaulters) remain out of the grip of the NBR, another NBR official said.
He said that they were issuing notices and imposing penalty on company taxpayers for not filing returns as companies held specific addresses and they (companies) were easy to trace.
Currently, there are around 50,000 TIN holding companies. Of which only 16,000 filed returns within the December 31 deadline.
-With New Age input
