Bangladesh’s tax infrastructure has long suffered from a chronic lack of modernization, accountability, and strategic coherence. Whether through unrealistic revenue targets, low tax compliance, or an over-reliance on indirect taxes, the system has repeatedly failed to evolve in step with the country’s economic ambitions.
The recent brouhaha surrounding the National Board of Revenue (NBR) exposes just how much rot the institution had developed, with frequent strikes and a general lack of cooperation being shown towards the interim government’s reform schemes for the organization. However, more troubling is the NBR’s persistent failure to hit its revenue collection goals which stand at the absolute centre.
According to a recent Daily Star report, the National Board of Revenue (NBR) has failed to meet its collection targets for 13 consecutive year, which is nothing short of a fiscal déjà vu that undermines the credibility of our budgetary planning and signals systemic dysfunction at the heart of our economy. The tax growth rate has reportedly plunged to a dismal 2.23%, far below past performance, and yet, in a move that defies logic, the interim government has set an even more ambitious target of Tk499,000 crore for FY2025–26 -- 35% higher than actual receipts.
Such sky high goals come off less as ambition and more as avoiding accountability.
The consequences of this gap are twofold: it compromises development priorities and erodes public trust -- the latter of which has been a persistent problem when it comes to our tax culture in general. Furthermore, tax evasion remains a bugbear -- Bangladesh lost an estimated Tk226,236cr in FY23, half of which is through corporate tax loopholes. At this point this is less about poor administration and more about entrenched resistance to reform, enabled by political inertia and a lack of transparency.