The Cash and Debt Management Committee (CDMC) of finance ministry wants to make it mandatory to use the treasury challan instead of existing pay orders and account payee cheques for payment of income tax.
The committee wants to make the change to ensure collection of the amount of tax on time and to remove any mismatch of data in the revenue collection, ministry officials said.
Currently, taxpayers pay taxes through pay orders or account payee cheques issued by commercial banks along with treasury challan. But they are allowed to pay the highest Tk10,000 through treasury challan.
In a letter, the CDMC sought advice from the National Board of Revenue to help ensure a coordinated mechanism in monthly revenue collection.
The letter asked the tax authorities to scrutinise the possibility of reintroduction of a provision making tax payment through treasury challan mandatory scraping the pay order-cheque system.
It also asked the NBR to place a report to the committee for discussing the issue in the next meeting.
Finance ministry officials said the government does not get revenue right after taxpayers pay the taxes due to procedural delays. Even taxes paid by the taxpayers are deposited to the government exchequer in months of delay, creating complexities in the process.
Officials said such delay is, however, helping the banks make extra profits keeping the money in their accounts.
It also creates mismatch in the accounts of revenue collection maintained by the revenue board and the Office of the Controller General of Accounts, they said.
The CGA office, in a report earlier, found a mismatch between the figure of income tax collected by NBR in the fiscal year 2013-14 and the figure stated by the NBR. While the NBR said it collected Tk43,207.27 crore, the CGA office said the figure was Tk38,365.51 crore.
On that time, officials said the mismatch was occurring because of problems in compilation and documentation methods of collected revenue by the two agencies of the government.
In the wake of such situation, the CDMC is planning to make the change in the system.
However, the NBR has not agreed with the proposal as it said that the CDMC may take the final decision after examining that whether the changes in the system can make any complexity or not.
The NBR said the government in 2003 introduced a provision allowing taxpayers for paying income tax through pay order and account payee cheque to ease the tax payment procedure.
The decision was taken on that time to prevent forgery in tax payment through treasury challan after detecting many treasury challans with forgeries of bank seals and official signatures.
As the taxmen had no mechasism to detect the authenticity of submitted treasury challan instantly, the unscrupulous people took the chance.
NBR argued that it was also a risky method for taxpayers to carry a huge amount of cash to the bank for depositing through treasury challan, NBR said.
The NBR suggested the government removing the procedural problems and delays if any in tax payment through pay order and bank cheque. It said there was no scope of fraudulence in the method.