The National Board of Revenue is going to launch a baseline survey shortly on taxpayers satisfaction with services provided by its Value Added Tax (VAT) wing.
Under the survey, NBR will establish a baseline under which progress between current Value Added Tax act 1991 and new Value Added Tax and Supplementary Duty Act 2012 could be measured, officials said.
The survey will be implemented under “Value Added Tax and Supplementary Duty Act, 2012 Implementation (VAT Online) project” of NBR.
The parliament in 2012 passed the Value Added Tax and Supplementary Duty Act to automate the overall VAT administration to increase the revenue collection. Following the initiative, the taxes authorities in 2013 undertook the VAT Online Project to ensure a client-friendly and a service-oriented automated system.
Once implemented, the system will connect 287 VAT circle offices, 84 divisional offices, 12 commissionerates, two directorates, three appeal commissionerates and a tribunal in a single platform.
The new VAT law is expected to help increase taxpayers satisfaction with services provided by the VAT wing of NBR, officials said.
According to NBR plan, a local survey company will soon be contacted to help design and carry out the survey. The company will work closely with VAT Wing Project Implementation Unit and World Bank Group team.
The company will collect 1,000 complete responses from VAT paying firms under two criteria.
70% of the sample responses will represent firms paying taxes based on their financial accounts while 30% under the turnover tax.
The survey will be conducted in all commissionarates, and VAT payers will be selected randomly.
The company will have to complete the survey fieldwork by May, 2016 and the final report on the survey findings should be ready by mid-July, 2016, the plan shows.
The NBR is scheduled to start online VAT registration from July 1, 2016.
It wants that all procedures under the new VAT act come online with the implementation of the system. Once automated, the system will substantially increase the government revenue through identifying non-compliant taxpayers.
Asked, NBR Chairman Nojibur Rahman said the authorities are working to establish taxpayer-friendly administration, and therefore, discussions are underway to determine the survey methodology.
“We will conduct the survey to find out actually how much we have progressed towards ensuring taxpayer- friendly administration and whether the VAT payers have confidence in us,” he added.