In the face of the ongoing political unrest, the National Board of Revenue has requested the finance ministry to lower the NBR’s revenue target in the revised budget for the current fiscal year, a senior tax official said.
The NBR official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the frequent shutdowns and blockades enforced by the opposition have been adversely affecting the country’s business sector, particularly import and export businesses. As a result, businesses were unable to pay due taxes, which would largely hamper revenue earnings.
This fiscal, a target was set to collect about Tk136,000 crore, but the unabated political turmoil has made the target almost impossible to achieve.
During the July-November period, revenue collection fell Tk6,000 crore short of target, according to provisional data.
Since the government is working on preparing the revised budget for FY2013-14, the NBR has requested the finance ministry to give the revenue issue high importance, the official said.
“We will request the finance ministry to set the revised target at Tk125,000 crore from the existing Tk136,000 crore,” the official said.
Earlier, NBR Chairman Md Ghulam Hussain told the Dhaka Tribune that revenue collection in July-November was Tk5,000 crore less than the target.
The political situation has also impacted other revenue sectors.
The NBR had to extend the income tax return deadline thrice due to poor response from businesses and individual taxpayers.
Meanwhile, the E-TIN project is also far from reaching its target. Only 9.5lakh people had registered for E-TIN until last week, whereas there are som