NBR launches e-filing project
Taxpayers will be able to file their income tax returns online from anywhere in the country without visiting tax offices from the next fiscal year under the e-filing programme of the National Board of Revenue. ‘Initially, the revenue board will launch a pilot project in June next year in big cities including Dhaka and Chittagong to facilitate online filing of returns,’ said NBR chairman Ghulam Hussain at a press briefing at his office in the capital on Sunday.
‘After successful completion of the pilot programme, all taxpayers will get the opportunity to submit their income tax returns online from January 1, 2016 without visiting tax offices,’ he said after launching the e-filing project.
Taxpayers may get the chance even from September 2015 if the pilot project experiences no major flaws, he said.
Online returns submission will increase income tax collection significantly, he hoped.
Tax deduction at source will also be digitized where withholding tax will be deducted online under the project to avoid irregularities in collection and deposit of the tax, he said.
Manual submission of income tax returns will be phased out after few years of successful run of the online filing, he added.
Earlier, NBR’s two separate initiatives of e-filing at large taxpayers unit and zone-8 failed due to various limitations including conditions to visit tax offices for tax clearance certificates, submission of hard copies and lack of proper e-payment process. On the other hand, the initiatives were taken in scattered manner.
Vietnam-based FPT Information System Corporation will implement the 18-month project titled ‘online filing and digitization on tax returns and establishment of taxpayers’ information and services’ with the financial and technical support of the Asian Development Bank.
Under the Tk 51.31 crore project, there will be interface mechanism under which customs and value-added tax system, Bangladesh Bank, commerce ministry’s trade portal, Export Promotion Bureau and National Identity Card project will be interlinked so that respective stakeholders can share data and information, Hussain said.
The revenue board is also planning to bring changes in the existing law so that taxpayers can pay their tax from any bank accounts or using any types of cards instead of just from Sonali Bank, he said.
He said that the government would have to come out from the existing tax payment system under which taxpayers could only pay their tax only through state-owned Sonali Bank.
Taxpayers should be facilitated to pay tax from any bank, he said.
According to the NBR plan, another 20 lakh new taxpayers will come under tax net by the next 3-4 years.
Hussain said that there should be around 60 lakh income taxpayers considering the size of the middle class and economy of the country.
There are only 18 lakh people registered as taxpayers and it means around 42 lakh possible taxpayers remain out of the net, he said.
According to the NBR data, the contribution of withholding tax or tax deduction at source to total income tax is only 52 per cent, much less than that in the developed countries like USA where the rate of TDS is 96 per cent.
‘We should increase the percentage of TDS and e-TDS will help us in boosting revenue collection,’ he said.
NBR member and project director Kalipada Haldar, Vietnam ambassador to Bangladesh Nguyen Quang Thuc and FPT Group chairman Do Cao Bao attended the briefing, among others.
-With New Age input
