The government is likely to hike income tax on fisheries business to prevent the politicians and other businessmen from whitening their black or undisclosed money, abusing existing lower tax benefits.
The National Board of Revenue (NBR) has reportedly taken up an initiative to fix 5% income tax on fishery sector form existing 3% as it found many people have been investing their undisclosed money in this sector just to evade taxes, while many of them even don’t have any such business, said an NBR official.
“Many people are showing huge incomes from their fisheries business in their income tax return files whereas most of them do not have any such business,’’ he added.
As of existing tax structure, around 25% tax is set for the other businesses while only 3% taxes is imposed on the fisheries business.
“As the NBR inspector cannot inspect the rural areas due to lack of manpower, a section of people have been investing small amount of money in fisheries to show huge income as a means to evade tax or to whitening their undisclosed or black money,” the official added.
“The NBR is bound to accept those figures they come up along with their return files due to lack of field inspection and thus a good amount of tax is evaded,” he said.
The NBR is expected to stop all the loopholes in the tax collection from the coming budget.
The government in FY2011-12 had imposed 5% taxes on fish farming, which was later reduced to 3% in the budget for FY2013-14 to enhance the revenue by promoting this sector.
The reduction was made for the next two years as tax incentives to encourage people to invest in this sector with good potentials.
The issue of evading taxes through fisheries came into light when the NBR finds many politicians showing their main source of income as fisheries in their affidavit placed before the Election Commission for vying at the January 5 poll.
Awami League leaders Sheikh Fazle Noor Taposh, Nur-e-Alam Chowdhury, Elias Uddin Mollah, Mannan Khan and Hanif, ABM Fazle Karim Chowdhury, Didarul Alam, and Talukder Abdul Khaleque has made a huge amount of wealth from their fish farming, they have claimed in their respective affidavits.