Tax fair pulls in huge responses

People fill up forms to complete their tax related work, at the tax fair that ended yesterday.

The weeklong annual tax fair ended yesterday amid huge responses from taxpayers, with the National Board of Revenue logging in Tk 2,129 crore in tax collections.

The receipts are 5 percent higher than in the previous year.

The number of returns submission and the number service recipients also exceeded the previous year’s mark, the NBR said yesterday.

Some 1.94 lakh returns were filed at the event, surpassing the previous high of 1.61 lakh registered last year.

The number of service recipients surged to 9.28 lakh, the highest since the NBR started the initiative.

Yesterday, the event took place in 13 districts including Dhaka and 31 upazilas.

The turnout of taxpayers was noteworthy on the last day, the NBR said in a statement. It also praised taxpayers for paying taxes for the development of the country.

“Once, people were afraid of tax. But the NBR has been able to create a tax culture through holding tax fairs,” said Muhammad Abdur Razzaque, chairman of the parliamentary standing committee on the finance ministry, at a discussion at the fair in Dhaka.

This was the seventh year that the NBR organised the event to provide all forms of tax-related assistance well as on-the-spot issuance of acknowledgement receipts for returns submissions to taxpayers. This year, the NBR organised the fair in all divisional cities for seven days and 64 districts for four days and 29 upazilas for two days, to encourage compliance and expand the tax net from its existing narrow base.

At present, about 13 lakh taxpayers submit returns, which is less than 1 percent of the population.

However, taxmen said the number of registered taxpayers has been rising since the beginning of the current fiscal year because of various measures taken by the NBR to bring more people under the tax net.

At the beginning of the fair, Finance Minister AMA Muhith said the number of registered taxpayers would rise by about 11 percent to 25 lakh by the end of the fiscal year.

The total number of registered taxpayers stood at 19.8 lakh at the end of June, according to the NBR.

In Dhaka, the NBR organised the event at its under-construction headquarters in Agargaon.

The new taxpayer identification numbers shot up to 36,853, a 70 percent rise year-on-year.

To help the taxpayers file and submit tax returns online, the NBR launched the e-filing system last week and started issuing access ID to those who visited the fair with a copy of the taxpayer identification number and their national ID.

So far, 5,780 taxpayers collected user IDs and passwords for access to the e-filing system from the fair.

Some 20,000 taxpayers received services from the e-filing booths at the fair.

Source: The Daily Star