Bangladesh Bank Governor Atiur Rahman called upon the National Board of Revenue to integrate online payment of value added tax with mobile financial services.
He said currently over 30m people in the country were using mobile financial services.
“So we request NBR to take step so people can pay VAT using MFS in addition to conventional method,” Atiur said at a a seminar yesterday.
The seminar was held on “VAT e-Payment, Integration with IBAS and other Commercial Banks under the VAT and Supplementary Duty Act, 2012” at the capital’s Institute of Diploma Engineering Building.
NBR’s VAT Online Project organised the seminar presided over by NBR Chairman Nojibur Rahman.
It discussed the integration of integrated VAT administration system (IVAS) with integrated budget and accounting system (IBAS) of Controller General of Accounts (CGA) and the scheduled banks.
The new VAT and SD Act 2012 will come into effect from July 1 beginning online VAT registration process.
All the procedures including registration, payment, return filing, refund, legal actions under new VAT law will go online by December 2016.
“Currently, almost all the works of VAT management is done manually, which is time-consuming and full of hasssles,” said Atiur.
He assured the NBR that the central bank would ask all the commercial banks to cooperate with the process.
He also asked NBR to form a technical committee headed by Bangladesh Bank deputy governor Nazneen Sultana who is supervising the IT issues.
Bank and Financial Institutions Division Secretary M Aslam Alam also made such a call.
He said the country’s banking system was not yet prepared to face cyber attacks.
Finance Division Senior Secretary Mahbub Ahmed said harassment of taxpayers and mismatch in revenue collection figures between NBR and CGA would come down to zero once the online system was in place.
CGA Abul Kashem asked the NBR to increase the ceiling for payment of income tax through treasury challan, which is now Tk10,000, as it could be verified online now.
He alleged that the tax paid by the taxpayers through treasury challan in many cases was not being deposited to the government exchequer by 1-2 days.
He requested the taxmen to make sure that the deposit of challans was made by 1-2 days of submission by taxpayers.
Dhaka Bank Deputy Managing Director Shakir Amin Chowdhury said the NBR had to make plans and share them to banks if banks are to be included in the process.
NBR Member Jahangir Hossain said the revised VAT contribution as a share of gross domestic product would increase to 4.7% from 3.7% at the end of first year of the reform plan.
Currently, the NBR can use Sonali Bank payment gateway, which will gradually be extended to all the commercial banks.
VAT Online Project Management Consultant Team Leader Abdur Rahman Khan, NBR Member Farid Uddin, NBR commissioners and representatives from commercial banks also addressed the seminar.
