The National Board of Revenue (NBR) has formulated a new rule for writing off revenues to get rid of the burden from the unrecoverable revenue at the import stage.
Under the new rule, the custom commissioners can recommend the tax authorities to write off the non-collectable custom duties, value added tax and other taxes, by different public and private organisations.
The NBR on July 1 issued an official notification, signed by its Chairman Nojibur Rahman, with an immediate effect.
According to article 202A of Customs Act, 1969, the government may write off any duty, penalty or other amount, wholly or partially if it seems that the amount could not be recovered or not recoverable due to bankruptcy or intractability or any other reason from the person responsible.
Although the act empowers the NBR to write off such dues to the government, the revenue authorities have so far failed to execute the power in absence of a rule to write off unpaid tax.
The revenue authorities have failed to recover a huge amount of payable tax from different individuals and companies since long due to a number of reasons. In most of the cases, the tax evaders and companies either became bankrupt or remain untraceable, alleged the official of the NBR.
Despite having no possibilities of recovery from them, custom and vat offices have to keep record of due taxes and documents related to it.
According to the new rule, custom commissioner concerned will recommend to the NBR to write off the dues, if the authorities failed to recover the amount despite repeated attempts.
The commissioner will write to NBR with detail information relating to irrecoverable dues in prescribed forms seeking approval.
After assessing the detailed information, the NBR will then place it in its board meeting.
