The National Board of Revenue has taken up a series of reform initiatives including modernisation of its all three core wings to boost revenue collection.
It will also work in partnership with the country’s apex trade body to ahcieve the goal. Dialogues with the FBCCI are being held under the initiative.
About the dialogues, NBR Chaiman Nojibur Rahman said: “We need business community’s views regarding challenges and achievements of this fiscal year’s budget. Through such programmes we can also have idea about next budget.”
“As businesses are the main players in resource mobilisation with the grassroots associations having an important role, the NBR has introduced partnership with the chambers,” he said in an interview with Dhaka Tribune recently.
NBR chief said there would be four working groups focusing capacity building and training, income tax, customs and value added tax. This is to help the officials learn how a business works and the businessmen understand the revenue-related laws and rules.
Partnership dialogues will be organised in Dhaka on a regular basis. Such programmes will then be spread across the country under supervision of the working groups, said Nojibur.
The discussions will mainly focus on the new Vat and Supplementary Duty Act 2012 to be effecting from July 16.
Currently, there are 1.75m TIN holders in the country although around 8m people have taxable incomes.
“The country’s economy is inherently very strong. We have some 8m solvent economic units who are capable enough of paying income tax, and the number is on the rise,” NBR chairman said.
The tax authority will coordinate its works with Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics and collect macro data from the Bureau to find out non-taxpaying people with taxable incomes. The regular door-to-door survey will also continue.
Nojibur said in Vietnam out of total 65m people, 30m pay tax, while in Bangladesh only 1.6m out of 160m pay tax.
He said the middle-income people have the tendency to pay tax, but there is a lack of such tendency among high-income group.
“If the high-income people were also committed to their duty of paying tax properly, it would help improve our tax-GDP ratio.”
He said awareness campaigns would be introduced in prospective parts of the country to have more people under the tax net.
“There are some economically vibrant upazilas where you will find many people have taxable incomes, but not paying tax. This is due to lack of awareness. They even don’t know that they have to pay tax against their income.”
In regards to Alternative Dispute Resolution mechanism, NBR chairman said the authority is trying to assign a person in each of different offices to deal with long-pending cases.
“There will be a legal solution group with representatives from income tax zones and commissionerates.
“We have also appointed three retainers and we want seven more to fight in courts. If there is 10 retainers, they can monitor the progress of the cases in high courts.
“Directives have been issued to field-level commissionerates to hold regular meeting with stakeholders to make ADR a fully functional.
“ADR will be a prominent subject for all FBCCI-NBR working groups,” Nojibur said.
About modernisation of NBR, he said the customs department has already implemented Asycuda World that is interlinked with networks of banks, importers and exporters, and customs clearing and forwarding agents.
He said the income tax wing has introduced electronic taxpayers identification number while e-return filing will be introduced in July 2016.
NBR chief said the opportunity cost is now very high in Bangladesh for income tax return filing, “so NBR is introducing e-filing so that people can file the returns staying at home.”
With the implementation of Vat law next year, registration and others will be done online.
Nojibur Rahman said the current direct tax code is not user-friendly, so the authority is drafting direct tax code both in Bengali and English to facilitate taxpayers understand the legal provisions.
While asked on utilisation of the Pangaon Port which has remained virtually non-functional since its inauguration in November 2012, the chairman said: “The infrastructure of Pangaon is very modern and now time has come for businesses to use it.”
“Businesses in recent inter ministerial meeting have assured us that they will use the port while shipping, commerce, home and communication ministries said they would take all initiatives required to popularise the port.”
In regards to the capacity, Nojibur said manpower of NBR was increased to 20,000 in 2013 from 10,000 in 2009. He said appointment of 700 more officers is in the process.
The NBR is constructing its own 30-storey building in the capital’s Agargaon, while there is also a plan to build a 40-storey tax building in Chittagong, the chairman said.
The NBR is also planning to build revenue complex in every district as the works are currently done in the rented field-level offices, he said.
