National Board of Revenue (NBR) has failed to reach revenue collection target for the second consecutive year as the overall collection fell short of around Tk4,487 crore from the revised target of Tk1,25,000 crore in fiscal year 2013-14.
Only customs wing of the Board has witnessed surplus in collection while the two main wings - income tax and value added tax - and also other taxes wings fell short of targets in last fiscal.
According to NBR data released yesterday, the board has managed to collect Tk1,20,513 crore revenue from its downsized target of Tk1,25,000 crore.
NBR officials blamed political unrest for missing the target. They said the board suffered failure as the taxpayers could not pay taxes properly due to political turmoil which badly hit the country’s business sector.
They said collection from the Large Taxpayers Unit which contributes major part of the revenue was also not up to the mark as big companies failed to pay taxes in several cases.
Private banks also contribute a major portion of the revenue. But they also failed to pay taxes to the expected level. The slash in tax at source on exports was also responsible for the revenue shortfall, the officials said.
The government had earlier revised down the revenue target from Tk1,36,090 crore on apprehension that the target would not be achieved as the collection faced setback due to political turmoil.
NBR Chairman Md Ghulam Hussain was, however, confident about achieving the target. But he failed twice to reach targets since he took charge of the NBR. In FY2012-13 the Board missed its revenue collection target by Tk3,644 crore although the collection exceeded targets in the previous three fiscal years.
According to the NBR data, VAT wing missed target by Tk3,124 crore as it was able to collect Tk43,726 crore against its target of Tk46,850 crore during the year.
Income tax wing target was missed by Tk1,444.50 crore as it has collected Tk42,915.5 crore against the target of Tk44,360 crore. Target from other taxes including travel tax could not be reached as the collection was Tk640.31 crore against the target of Tk920 crore.
Only the customs wing exceeded its target by Tk361 crore. The collection was Tk33,231 crore when the target was Tk32,870 crore. For the current fiscal year, the government has finalised revenue collection target for the NBR at Tk1,49,720 crore while income tax wing will have to collect Tk57,500 crore, VAT wing Tk55,580 crore and customs wing Tk36,680 crore. The NBR recently held a meeting with all its commissioners to finalise strategic plan to achieve the revenue collection target.
The meeting has discussed strategies for proper revenue collection that include collection strategy of advance income tax from various sectors including registration of land and apartments, house rent, surcharge from different sectors, settling disputes that have long been pending etc.