Large Taxpayers Unit (income tax) commissioner Apurba Kanti Das receives a checque for Tk 3.10 crore against outstanding income tax from Bank Asia chief financial officer Mohammad Ibrahim Khalil at a programme arranged by NBR to celebrate the traditional halkhata on the occasion of Pahela Baishakh at LTU office in Dhaka. — New Age photo
The National Board of Revenue on Sunday celebrated traditional Halkhata festival marking Pahela Baishakh, the first day of Bangla year, amid positive response in receiving outstanding and advance taxes from taxpayers.
Field level NBR offices —Income tax and value-added tax —arranged day-long programmes to celebrate the events across the country on Sunday, the second day of Bangla New Year as there was government holiday on Pahela Baishakh.
Officials said that the NBR was yet to get the final result of the tax receipts from field offices.
But, taxpayers paid Tk 388 crore in income tax in arrears and advance, NBR member (tax administration and human resource management) Zia Uddin Mahmood told New Age.
He said the collection would be more than Tk 400 crore when the final data would be available.
VAT wing was yet to finalise the collection data.
Last year, taxpayers paid a total of Tk 566 crore at the Halkhata festival, arranged for the first time in the country.
Of the amount, the revenue board received Tk 305 crore in income tax, Tk 207 crore in customs duty and Tk 53 crore in VAT.
According to the NBR data, this year taxpayers paid Tk 34.48 crore at Large Taxpayers Unit (income tax) till 3.30pm, Tk 3.31 crore at LTU (VAT), Tk 7.75 crore at income tax zone-12 in Dhaka, Tk 10.06 crore at tax zone-5, Tk 5.82 crore at Customs Excise and VAT Commissionerate Dhaka East.
Halkhata is a traditional programme celebrated by the businesses on the last day of Bangla year to realise arrears from their clients and to open new book of accounts for the new Bangla year.
NBR chairman Md Mosharraf Hossain Bhuiyan inaugurated the programme at income tax zone-8 in Dhaka and later visited tax zones-3,5,6 and 12 in Dhaka and attended view exchange meetings with taxpayers.
Source: New Age.