The National Board of Revenue (NBR) has decided to bring the country’s some 32,450 big taxpayers under intensive monitoring, aiming to end the tax-evasion culture.
The NBR has already directed all the circle offices of the Income Tax Wing to prepare a list of 50 big taxpayers’ names from their respective circles.
“Each circle office will send its list to the commissioner’s office containing the information of the tax collection of 50 taxpayers. The commissioners will send the list of the big taxpayers under their jurisdiction in the prescribed form to the NBR members and they will monitor the matter,” a senior NBR official told UNB.
There are now 31 tax zones across the country with 649 circle offices. And if each circle office sends 50 names, then the number will go up to 32,450.
He said the tax administration has taken the decision early this fiscal year as it has got a huge revenue collection target in 2015-16 fiscal budget.
The NBR got a gigantic target of Tk 176,370 crore for the 2015-16 fiscal, against Tk 135,028 that it earned in the last fiscal.
“To achieve the target, the NBR is aiming to remain focused right from the very beginning of the fiscal,” the NBR official said.
As things are planned, an amount of Tk 64,971 crore will come from income tax, Tk 64,262 crore from VAT and Tk 18,752 from import duty. The target for export duty has been fixed at Tk 37 crore, excise duty at Tk 1,239 crore and supplementary duty at Tk 25,875 crore.
The NBR official said the decision to prepare the list was taken to silence the critics that the tax officials help the taxpayers to evade tax.
Recently, the NBR has suspended assistant tax commissioner of circle-103 of Tax Zone-5 Jahidul Islam for his alleged involvement in helping taxpayers in tax evasion.
Currently, the enlisted number of taxpayers in the country is around 1.8 million. In the last fiscal (2014-15), some 1.07 million taxpayers submitted their income tax returns, down from 1.16 million during the 2013-14 fiscal year.
“Many of these taxpayers hardly show their actual income to the NBR and evade tax. But due to the manpower shortage, the Income Tax Wing of the NBR often fails to monitor the income tax returns of these taxpayers,” the NBR official said.
He also mentioned that the preparation of the 50 big taxpayer names from each circle is part of their effort to check the tax evasion by these taxpayers.
“With these lists, we’ll be able to monitor some of the taxpayers over their income tax payment from time to time which will ultimately help us streamline the whole system,” he said.
Source: UNB
