The number of online tax return submissions in Bangladesh may triple to 1.5 million in FY25, from 500,000 filed last year, said Michal Krejza, head of cooperation at the delegation of the European Union (EU) to Bangladesh on Monday.
He said this at the official launching of the new e-return service centre at the NBR headquarters in the capital.
The new service centre will support taxpayers in the use of the e-Return tax submission system and play a key part of NBR’s mission to make it easier for taxpayers to submit their tax returns.
The service centre, operated by NBR officials who have been trained in service centre and e-return system intricacies, has been funded by the European Union (EU) as part of their Public Financial Management Program.
Krejza said last year the number of e-return submissions was about half of a million, which was very low for a big country like Bangladesh. But this year, it will reach 1-1.5 million which would be a tremendous increase.
"We hope that the number of people using this service centre and the number of people submitting electronic tax returns will rise quickly," he added.
Regarding the centre, he said they have been financing it now for 2-3 years while they were happy that it has moved into the new building of NBR as it was somewhere else until now.
"It is now easier for the centre to operate," he added.
Krejza also said that the EU has been supporting the country for many years. "Now you see a particularly important window of opportunity for reforms."
He went on: "We're very happy that the NBR chairman has very good ideas on how to drive reforms in NBR and obviously these reforms are absolutely fundamental for further development of Bangladesh because it is through NBR that the money comes to finance reforms".
Reforms
NBR Chairman Md Abdur Rahman Khan reiterated the need for NBR to move towards a fully digital form of interaction with taxpayers to make NBR services available to taxpayers on a 24/7 basis and assure taxpayers that their tax matters will be dealt with faster and in a standard and uniform manner.
He referred to the UN’s e- Government Development Services Index released a few days ago, where Bangladesh had climbed 11 notches to surpass both the South Asian and the global average, giving Bangladesh the highest EGDI value among the LDCs.
He said that although this was a monumental achievement – this was not enough and that NBR would be focusing intently on digital transformation in the coming months, with components like this Service Centre, making up part of this drive.
He thanked the EU for continued support to NBR in capacity building and strengthening public finance management that include development of the e-Return system and also launching of the Service Centre.
However, the e-Return website (etaxnbr.gov.bd) contains a detailed help facility as well as a user manual and frequently asked questions.
For further assistance, the Service centre can be reached by dialing 09643717171 on weekdays from 09:00-17:00.
A ticketing function is accessible from within the “Contact” section of the e-Return system, where taxpayers can report a problem or lodge a query related to the system (www.ticket.etaxnbr.gov.bd).