The National Board of Revenue is going to introduce online system for income tax returns submission, processing, and tax payment on July 1 this year.
Under the “Strengthening Governance Management Project”, the NBR will digitalise the system to enhance transparency and accountability and increase tax revenues, said NBR Member Kalipada Halder at a function in Dhaka yesterday.
State Minister for Finance MA Mannan inaugurated computer distribution and installation for all 649 income tax circle offices across the country at the function titled “Towards Digital Tax: Computer Hardware Distribution Ceremony Among The Field Offices” held under the SGMP.
MA Mannan said the digitalisation of the income tax system “is another step forward towards the vision of Digital Bangladesh.”
Vietnamese firm FPT Information System Corporation is implementing the project for establishing an integrated income tax administration system by December 31 this year. Asian Development Bank is providing assistance and fund.
Kalipada Halder, also project director of the SGMP, said the allegations of harassment against tax officials would reduce to zero after digitalisation of the system.
NBR Chairman Nojibur Rahman said the authorities were emphasising modernisation of its all three wings - income tax, customs and value added tax to bring transparency and mobility to the revenue collection system and the SGMP would boost the process further.
He expected that the board would be able to reach the target of Tk1,76,371 crore revenue collection this fiscal year.
Officials said the project was designed in a way which could manage up to 3m taxpayers. Now, there are around 1.5m taxpayers in the country.
The system will have interfaces with National ID project, customs, Vat, Bangladesh Bank, other banks, insurances and treasury system, and standard interface with third party applications.
The taxpayers will be able to submit their income tax returns online. Under the system, all other processes including assessment of returns, tax calculation, payment, audit and giving tax clearance certificates can also be done online.
Under the project, the taxpayers in all 649 circle offices, including 11 survey circles, will be connected online and the circle offices will share information with each other to ease the process.
As per the plan, NBR will start piloting of the project at the income tax zone 8.
The system is expected to ensure better revenue distribution, efficient collection of revenue, user-friendly service, fraud detection, higher rate of collection, standard solutions for all tax types in whole tax system, integrated solution for all revenue types, significant decrease of costs and faster tax collection.
NBR members, income tax commissioners and representatives from ADB, Bangladesh Computer Council, Bangladesh Bank and Access to Information programme, among others, also attended the function.
