The National Board of Revenue on Sunday introduced online income tax returns in its Zone-8 on an experimental basis to maximise utilisation of the digital devices.
Finance minister Abul Maal Abdul Muhith inaugurated the system at his secretariat office by submitting his own income tax returns for 2010-11.
The system was introduced only for tax zone-8, which will be gradually done in all tax zones. Around 30,000 tax payers in tax zone-8, mostly doctors, chartered accountants, lawyers, architects and the taxpayers in Gulshan and Banani are included.
For submission of tax through online, a taxpayer needs to visit the website www.taxzone-8.org, where the taxpayers would be able to know in details on how to submit returns through online, reports United News of Bangladesh.
The taxpayers could submit their tax returns from home or even abroad. Each taxpayer will have a personal identification number (PIN). The taxpayers will visit the website of tax zone-8 and use the PIN to access their accounts.
Although this payment system will not be introduced right now, a taxpayer can send his pay order number online and send the pay order to the tax-zone office by post or any other means later, said officials.
The taxpayer would be spared going through the hassles in submitting tax returns personally.
The taxpayers may face some problems initially. If the payer makes a mistake in submitting the returns online in the initial stage, they will get a scope to make corrections later.
Besides, there will be a service centre with trained personnel on the ground floor of the office.
At an individual level, this is the first time that online return submission has taken place. At present, there is a scope for that in the Large Taxpayer Unit (LTU) at company level.
The finance minister lamented that out 27 lakh TIN holders, only 8 lakh pay tax and the rest don’t.
Muhith expressed hope that the number of tax payers in the country would reach one crore in near future.
‘The purpose of the online submission is to ease and simplify the submission process as well as reducing the harassment of the tax payers,’ he said hoping that the rest of the tax zones will be brought under online tax submission from next year.
