The National Board of Revenue has decided to get tough with the taxpayers if they fail to file income tax return for the current fiscal by September 30.
The board will also take action against those who will not pay the actual amount of tax properly as per their income tax returns.
As part of its budget implementation plan for the fiscal year 2015-16, NBR has recently asked all its field level income tax offices to impose penalty on these two types of taxpayers as per provisions of income tax ordinance 1984 by December this year.
The tax authority is assigned to mobilise Tk1,76,370 crore revenue in this fiscal while the lion share of Tk64,971 will be generated from income tax.
The revenue board has become desperate to meet its target through eying on unexplored sectors.
Currently, around 17 lakh people in the country holds Electronic Taxpayers Identification Number (e-TIN), but only around 11lakh file income tax returns in an average where the rest somehow managed to avoid the provisions.
The tax offices will identify such taxpayers by analyzing the e-TIN database and impose penalty on them, said an NBR official.
Earlier, it was a tough task for NBR to identify such errant taxpayers, but now it has a database containing the details of taxpayers as per the National Identity card, the official said, explaining how to identify such taxpayers.
Currently, the minimum tax ceiling for individual taxpayers is at Tk2.50lakh.
NBR will fine Tk1,000 penalty at a time plus Tk50 per day if any TIN holder fails to submit tax return within the deadline.
The new e-Tin holders will be penalised with the highest Tk5,000 if they fail to file the return by the deadline.
According to the income tax act, taxpayers having income above Tk2.50lakh have to pay tax.
If any e-TIN holders do not have taxable income, he/she can mark ‘nil’ in the return, but submission of returns is mandatory.
On the other hand, the board will also penalise the tin-holders showing less amount of tax in returns than the actual one.
“We have found that a huge number of taxpayers pay less amount of tax than what is payable in their returns. They misuse the arithmetical calculation through universal self-assessment system to make this happen,” said the NBR official.
Currently, around 95% taxpayers file their income tax return through universal self-assessment system. From the current fiscal, the tax authorities will analyse the tax returns filed under the system to check such misuses, he said.
If any taxpayer pays less amount of tax than the actual one, he/she may face a penalty of up to 25% on the assessed amount of tax or on the amount of unpaid tax.
It was learned that NBR will publish advertisement in the print and electronic media by September of this year to get tin-holders to be aware about the initiatives.