The National Board of Revenue (NBR) yesterday extended the deadline for submission of income tax returns by one month. The deadline is now October 31, MA Quader Sarker, an official of tax administration and monitoring of NBR, said yesterday, adding, “We will in no way extend the time further.”
The announcement of the time extension came hours before the expiry of the deadline set earlier, fulfilling the demand of trade bodies and tax lawyers. They said an
increase in the number of tax circles caused hassles as they faced difficulties in tracing the new tax officers.
The authority doubled the number of tax circles to 649 this year to improve monitoring and boost direct tax collection by reducing the workloads of each circle.
In many cases, the change led to a disorder in tax files, which was why tax officials themselves are finding it hard to locate all files of the tax circles they work
for.
“Tax circle of almost every taxpayer has changed following the expansion. Many taxpayers faced difficulty in submitting returns and pay orders or challans,” said
Quader.
NBR had directed field officers to send files to the relevant circles so that taxpayers did not have to move around from one circle to another, he added.
Besides, many taxpayers went to Saudi Arabia to perform hajj. A section could not prepare returns because of a two-week holiday in August, he said while explaining the
reasons behind the time extension.
“Time extension will ease hassle of taxpayers a lot,” said tax lawyer Syed Iqbal Mostafa, now general secretary of Dhaka Tax’s Bar Association.
Quader said NBR would take action for not submitting returns for the fiscal 2012-13 by the deadline.
There were 35 lakh TIN (Taxpayer’s Identification Number) holders but only 12 lakh of them submitted returns for the year 2011-12, said Quader.
-With The Daily Star input
