Only 8.35 lakh people paid income tax by Nov 30 deadline
The National Board of Revenue found the number of individual income taxpayers for the current fiscal year totally unsatisfactory, officials said. They said there was virtually no growth in the number of income tax returns submitted by the taxpayers by the deadline that ended on Sunday.
The number of income taxpayers who submitted their returns this year has remained almost same compared with that of the last year.
According to provisional data of the NBR, around 8.35 lakh people filed their income tax returns in the current fiscal year of 2014-15 by November 30.
There were another 1.95 lakh taxpayers who filed time petition seeking time for filing returns to the NBR, the data showed.
A total of 8.28 lakh taxpayers had submitted returns by December 31, 2013 which was the scheduled deadline for last fiscal year of 2013-14, the data showed.
Finally, around 10.06 lakh taxpayers had submitted their returns in last year.
Income tax collection, however, has increased to Tk 1,390 crore in the current fiscal year from Tk 1,288 crore in last year, the data showed.
A high official of the NBR told New Age on Monday that the number of total taxpayers should have been around 13 lakh as more than 3 lakh people registered themselves as fresh taxpayers by receiving online generated taxpayers’ identification numbers along with 10.06 lakh existing taxpayers.
‘But the trend proves that by the end of the current fiscal year, if all the time petitioners submit their returns, the number of taxpayers will remain almost same or few thousand more than the number of last year,’ he said.
The number of taxpayers should increase as many people earn more than Tk 2.20 lakh, the tax free income limit for individual taxpayers, he said.
According to Income Tax Ordinance-1984, people having TIN must submit income tax returns. Currently, there are 17.52 lakh TIN holders in the country.
Officials said that despite various efforts including arranging income tax fairs and expansion of tax offices across the country to expand the tax net, the number of individual taxpayers has not increased significantly due to lack of enforcement of law by the tax administration, lack of tax compliance on the part of the taxpayers and overall tax culture prevailing in the country.
Every year, the revenue board brings a significant number of people under tax net but that does not reflect in the income tax returns because of lack of proper monitoring and follow-up by taxmen, they said.
They said that the NBR hardly took actions against the non-complaint people though it was a punishable offence under the ordinance.
This year, they will take action against the people who did not submit their returns despite having taxpayer’s identification number, an official said.
‘Tracing the non-compliant people will be easy as the revenue board holds all information about the e-TIN holders in its database,’ he said.
According to the Income Tax Ordinance-1984, tax officials can impose a penalty of Tk 1,000 at a time and Tk 50 for each day delay for non-submission of returns.
-With New Age input
