Taxpayers cannot submit tax returns online for at least another year as the project’s implementation has been delayed because of a row between the National Board of Revenue and the Asian Development Bank over the system’s integration.
The NBR management wanted to implement a central system for submission of import tax, income tax and VAT; but the development partners, especially the ADB which is funding the project, preferred separate systems for this, an official of the NBR told the Dhaka Tribune.
The official said the dispute had left the prospects of the automated NBR services uncertain for quite some time resulting in the delay.
NBR Chairman Md Ghulam Hossain yesterday sent a proposal to the cabinet committee on public purchase for selecting a consultant for the project named Strengthening Governance Management.
In the proposal, the NBR chairman has admitted that the project, which was supposed to complete in December this year, will now take time up to December next year.
He, however, has not said anything about the reasons behind the delay.
The NBR has taken up the project to enhance transparency and accountability in tax filing with an aim of increasing tax revenue and enhancing public trust in service delivery of the income tax administration, the proposal reads.
The paper says through the project taxpayers under a total of 649 circle offices, including 11 survey circles, will be connected online and the circle offices will share information with each other to ease the process.
Once the online system is up, taxpayers will be able to access all services related to income tax by registering themselves on the project’s website.
The seven divisional towns – Dhaka, Chittagong, Rajshahi, Khulna, Barisal, Sylhet and Rangpur – will come under the project.
Presently, the online tax return submission system is in place covering tax zone 8 of Dhaka and about 23,000 taxpayers under the zone are submitting their tax returns online.
The project will be implemented at a cost of Tk78.98 crore of which the government will provide Tk12.68 crore and the ADB will fund the remaining Tk66.3 crore.
As per the proposal, the NBR evaluation committee selected Vietnamese IT firm FRT Information System Corporation for Tk51.31 crore.
A major portion of the allocation for the project – Tk24.90 crore – will be spent for buying three pieces of software. Another Tk19.05 crore has been allocated for buying the hardware for the whole system and Tk8.28 crore for procuring hardware for regional data entry and information centre.
Other firms that participated in the tender were Tata Consultancy Services, Infra-soft International JV with the Techno Vista Ltd, Tech Valley Networks Ltd and Info-tech Global Pty Ltd. Apart from these, the Pakistan Revenue Automation Ltd, Ernst and Young JV with Wipro Ltd, and Invenio Business Solution JV with GPIT became ineligible after technical evaluation.
The NBR chairman yesterday told the Dhaka Tribune that the board was working on introducing the systems for filing income tax returns and e-payment from July 1, 2015.
“We will start piloting the e-return filing next January and the project along with e-payment method will come into operation from July 1, 2015,” he said.
Terming the existing e-payment system insufficient, Ghulam Hossain said: “The existing methods in different banks are not good enough. We are working on building links among all banks and introducing electronic signature. Some work in the process is still pending – it will be completed within the remaining timeframe.”
The direct tax-GDP ratio in Bangladesh is the lowest in the sub-continent. In India the ratio is 6%, in Pakistan 4% whereas in Bangladesh it is only 2%.
According to a study, the number of people eligible for tax is one crore but only 10 lakh submit tax returns regularly. At present, the number of people with the Tax Identification Number is over 17 lakh