The national budget for the fiscal year 2016-17 is likely to be placed at the parliament on June 2, this year.
According to officials, the budget will focus mainly on two major revenue related issues- expansion of the tax base and implementation of the new Value Added Tax and Supplementary Duty Act 2012.
“The budget is likely to be placed in parliament on June 2,” NBR Senior Member Farid Uddin told a pre-budget meeting held in the city yesterday.
He also said the budget of the next year will be extremely important for implementation of new VAT act.
Although only three months left, the government and the business are still in disagreement over some provisions of implementation of the new VAT law.
With introduction of the law, which will come into effect from July 1, 2016, all procedures of VAT payment will go online and all levels of business have to pay a unique and a flat VAT rate at 15%.
The new act will have no provisions for package VAT or truncated value-based VAT system.
Business, including the leading chambers is mostly disagreeing with the government on collection of uniform 15% VAT rate from the traders.
NBR officials said the government could not wait more for an ideal situation as all the laws in the country, including the existing Value Added Tax Act 1991, starts like trial and error basis and come to a shape gradually.
The implementation of the new act is a political decision and it will not change, said an NBR top official.
“However, the core challenge for this radical shift will be lack of training and orientation for the stakeholders, mostly businesses,” he added.
Describing on another vision, officials said: “The budget may have indication on how to expand the tax base by catching potential taxpayers.”
Currently, there are around 17 lakh TIN holders, out of 16 crore people in the country. Among them, nearly 12 lakh submit their income tax returns.
The government has a target to raise the number of active taxpayers to 30 lakh in next four years as the present government completes its office.
Prior to the budget, the National Board of Revenue and FBCCI will jointly organise 37th NBR-Federation of Bangladesh Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FBCCI) Consultative Committee Meeting on April 28.
Business representatives will be able to make recommendations directly to the Finance Minister AMA Muhith at the scheduled meeting.
With the annual budget, the government brings amendments to existing laws and rules related to customs, VAT and income tax to maximise revenue earnings, provides protection to local industries, facilitates international trade and solves procedural complexities in revenue collection.
