Business Premises, Chambers
Traders, professionals asked to display TIN certificates
The National Board of Revenue has asked business houses, shops and professional taxpayers to display their taxpayer identification number certificates at a visible place of business premises, officials of the revenue board said. They said that the NBR took the initiative to smoothly carry out the ongoing door-to-door survey and identify business and professional tax dodgers easily.
In a recent instruction, the revenue board has also instructed its field offices to strictly enforce mandatory displaying of TIN certificates under the rules of Income Tax Ordinance-1984 in a bid to expand tax net by identifying tax dodgers through ongoing survey.
They have also been asked to send reports to the NBR if taxpayers are following the instructions regarding displaying of TIN certificates.
According to Article 198C of the ordinance, a taxpayer having income from business and profession will have to display TIN certificate at a conspicuous place at his business premises.
Deputy Commissioner of Taxes will impose a penalty of Tk 500 if the taxpayer disobeys the rule for the first time and Tk 250 for every month for continuing default of displaying TIN certificate, according to Article 124 of the ordinance.
‘Usually, most of the taxpayers do not display their TIN certificates in absence of strict enforcement by the taxmen as they remain busy with regular tax collection activities,’ a senior NBR official told New Age on Monday.
Sometimes, field level revenue officials impose penalty on defaulting business houses, shops and professional taxpayers which is not adequate to compel the taxpayers to obey the rules, he said.
Non-compliance of the rules by the taxpayers creates problems for taxmen to conduct door-to-door survey and find out tax evading businessmen and professionals.
The revenue board has already started a fresh survey from February this year to bring at least 2 lakh suspected tax dodgers under the income tax net.
Till November 2013, the revenue board detected 1,43,408 suspected tax dodging house owners and businessmen across the country by the survey-2012 which ended in January this year against the target of 2.57 lakh, according to NBR data.
The Survey-2014 under which tax officials will visit houses, shopping centres, markets, shops at city corporations, municipalities and economic growth centres or posh areas of Upazilas to identify tax dodging people and bring them under the tax net.
Tax officials of field offices of NBR said that they have taken various initiatives to create awareness among the taxpayers about the importance of displaying TIN certificates.
‘We are publishing advertisement on newspapers, circulating booklets and other materials describing the rules. Officials are also informing taxpayers about the issue while visiting business houses and other offices,’ an NBR field official said.
Officials of the NBR will verify if TIN holders are displaying TIN certificates at the end of these rigorous campaigns. If the rules are not obeyed, taxmen will follow the rules strictly and impose penalty, he said
-With New Age input
