NBR adds 20 booths to Dhaka venue
The income tax fair in Dhaka drew huge crowd on Friday, a public holiday, but taxpayers complained that they struggled to find satisfactory services at the fair.
Officials of the National Board of Revenue said that they increased the number of booths by 20 at the Officers’ Club, the fair venue in Dhaka, on Friday to cope with the huge rush of visitors.
Friday was the fifth day of the weeklong nationwide income tax fairs. The NBR is organising the fairs to create awareness among people of the necessity of paying taxes.
Taxpayers alleged that there were lack of cooperation, inadequate services and delay in getting electronically generated taxpayers’ identification numbers at the fair.
Almas Hossain Tuhin, a taxpayer who has been holding tax identification number for last twelve years, said,
‘Because of losses in my business I don’t have taxable income now. I came to the fair to regularise my income tax returns. But, when I informed the NBR officials that I would submit my returns only, they did not help me to get the service.’
Mofakkharul Islam Khayrul, a new taxpayer, said, ‘It is the first time I have come to pay my income tax, but I have received little cooperation from the NBR officials to understand the tax form properly.’
‘Tax forms are so difficult to understand that the government should take initiative to make the forms simple to encourage people to pay taxes,’ said Tarique Hasan, another young taxpayer.
Some service seekers alleged that they did not get their e-TINs on Friday for which they submitted forms Thursday evening.
An NBR high official said that mistakes in filling in forms by the clients might be the reason for the delay.
NBR first secretary Abdur Rahman Khan told New Age, ‘We are very much sincere to make every taxpayer satisfied. But giving extra attention to any taxpayer is not possible for us due to huge number of visitors.’
On the fifth day, a total of 69,621 people received services at the fairs across the country while 87,516 people received services on Thursday, NBR data showed.
The NBR is organising the seven-day income tax fairs at the seven divisional cities and two-day fairs in all other district headquarters from September 16 to September 22.
The revenue board, for the first time, expanded the income tax fairs, which were organised in 19 districts last year, to all the districts in the country.
According to the NBR data, a total of 9,708 new and old taxpayers took e-TINs on Friday.
But, revenue collection from the fairs dropped on the day as the government got Tk 102.28 crore in taxes on Friday while it was Tk 233.25 crore in the previous day.
The submission of income tax returns also declined to 19,051 on Friday while it was 22,038 on Thursday.
The revenue board in the first five days of the tax fairs collected Tk 690.83 crore in taxes. The NBR provided services to 3 17,367 visitors, issued 8,047 new TINs, and replaced 46,958 old TINs with e-TINs.
-With New Age input
