The National Board of Revenue has given 42-point instructions to its field offices emphasising on finding new potential sectors and individuals eligible to pay income tax and value-added tax as an important tool for achieving revenue collection target for the fiscal year 2014-15. In addition, it also asked its field offices for preparing lists of large company taxpayers to ensure revenue collection based on their actual commercial growth along with taking steps to prevent tax evasion.
Field officials were asked to identify disputes involving large amount of revenue and take steps to settle the disputes immediately with the help of the office of attorney general.
Commissioners will have to be careful so that taxmen do not harass the taxpayers in the revenue collection process rather they will have to ensure a taxpayer-friendly environment, the instruction stated.
The revenue board on Sunday issued the instructions to its 70 commissioners of income tax, customs and value-added tax wings against the backdrop of failure in revenue collection in the last fiscal year.
In FY 2013-14, the revenue board fell short of the target of revenue collection by Tk 4,487.17 crore as it managed to collect only Tk 1,20,512.83 crore against the revised target of Tk 1,25,000 crore for the year.
The revenue board set a target of revenue collection at Tk 1,49,720 crore for the current fiscal year.
In its instruction, the NBR said that field offices would have to achieve their respective targets at any cost under any circumstances.
Chairman and members of the revenue board will conduct rigorous visit to the field offices to monitor revenue collection activities, it said.
The NBR asked the commissioners of customs wing to take several measures including accurate valuation and prevention of false declaration of goods to check duty evasion at the import stage.
They were also asked to release imported goods as soon as possible and to take target-oriented approach in risk management, according to the instructions.
For VAT wing, the tax authority instructed the commissioners to determine VAT of cigarette and bidi companies and sweet meat shops based on their actual commercial growth along with regular process.
They were asked to pay special attention to hotels, restaurants and community centres and find out unregistered businesses in collecting VAT.
In determining VAT, tax officials will consider the size, number of seats and number of guests of community centres, the instructions said.
In case of tax evasion, taxmen were advised to take strong legal action against the tax evading companies and individual taxpayers.
For achieving the target of income tax collection, the revenue board decided to emphasise on collecting tax at source from different sectors, expanding the tax net through the ongoing door to door survey and tax collection from house owners.
In addition, the NBR will arrange taxpayer education programme to make people aware of the importance of paying tax and consequences of evading tax, according to the instructions.
-With New Age input