In a country where poverty is widespread, it is easy to detect who are dodging taxes. The National Board of Revenue (NBR) has started doing exactly that targeting the errant flat owners who are least bothered to pay their taxes.
The NBR has taken the move as they recently in its survey found that many flat owners of the country dodged the income tax years after years.
The tax authority has detected that some 166,500 flat owners and traders who are still out of the tax net despite having taxable incomes. Of them, 45,600 are home owners, mainly in Dhaka city and the rest are traders.
However, around 1,000 of them later submitted income tax returns while they were forced to do so.
According to data provided by Real Estate and Housing Association of Bangladesh (Rehab), realtors have handed over around 164,000 flats to their buyers since 1992.
The NBR has started collecting apartment owners’ payment information from the realtors in a bid to net tax-dodger flat owners in major cities. It has already collected some information from developers and instructed its field offices to get more information.
According to a source at the NBR, a good number of people usually registered their flats in the name of their housewives, but they hardly pay their taxes.
“We want to examine how much money the apartment owners have paid to developers to buy flats. Many housewives, who own apartments, do not give taxes,” an NBR high official said.
He said that the NBR would initially give reminders to such tax-evaders and then force them to pay taxes.
In December 2012, the revenue authority had launched a survey targeting homeowners and landlords in metropolitan cities, and shops in markets and malls, aiming to bring three lakh new people under tax net.
The initiative came as the revenue authority believes that a large number of people remain out of the tax net despite having taxable incomes.
Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina in a recent meeting at her official residence Ganobhaban asked the NBR to conduct strong drives against the tax-dodgers and if necessary, search their homes and business establishments.
Finance Minister AMA Muhith, Planning Minister AHM Mustafa Kamal, Bangladesh Bank Governor Atiur Rahman and secretaries of different ministries were present at the meeting that revised budget for the current fiscal (2013-14).
The meeting criticised the NBR for bringing down the revenue target for the current fiscal year saying that there was no logic behind downsising the target while the NBR still can meet the previous target by reining in tax evasion menace.
The NBR slashed the revenue target for the current fiscal by Tk 11,090 crore to Tk 125,000 crore.
Meanwhile, the NBR has set a target to net in around 200,000 new taxpayers by December this year by conducting an external survey across the country.
The survey team would focus on new taxpayers in both cities and district towns, who have taxable incomes.
The survey and inspection wing of the NBR has drawn up a five-year plan to raise the number of taxpayers to 800,000 by the calendar year 2017.
As part of the plan, the NBR found about 166,000 new taxpayers in 2013. Of the new taxpayers, about 75,000 opened their tax files with different tax offices across the country. Of them, 74.27 percent are businesspeople and 21.55 percent house owners.
Source: UNBConnect
