Taxmen yesterday received an overwhelming response from taxpayers at all the fair venues in 61 places, including Dhaka, tax officials said.
The tax fair drew large crowds yesterday being the weekly holiday, they said, adding that the tax officials struggled to provide taxpayers with proper services.
Many taxpayers, however, claimed that taxmen were taking much time to fill the returns or register with Electronic Taxpayers Identification Number (eTIN) for them.
On a visit to the tax fair at the Officers’ Club, it could be seen that taxpayers were waiting in long queues to get services and all booths were crammed with new and old taxpayers.
Farzana Islam, who was waiting in a booth to submit her tax return, said the National Board of Revenue (NBR) should set up more booths to ensure proper services.
“As the tax officials know that there will be rush on the weekly holiday, they should have made additional arrangements,” she said, adding that she was waiting for 30 minutes, but was yet to meet the tax officials as all of them were busy handling the crowd and providing services.
NBR officials said they were doing their best to serve the taxpayers, but are facing difficulties in doing so due to the overwhelming numbers.
On the fourth day, a total of 104,970 people received services at the fairs across the country, according to NBR data. The board has mobilised around Tk157.63 crore from 24,342 income tax returns.
A total of 1,658 people were registered with eTIN while 1,531 people had re-registered their old 10-digit TINs replacing them with eTIN.
In the last four days, the board served 346,839 taxpayers, with a total of 16,000 taxpayers obtaining eTIN registration. The board has collected Tk931.5 crore from 69,700 returns from the fairs across the country.
The various services provided by NBR included online facility, for submitting income tax returns and registering for e-TIN certificates.
Separate booths for women, people with disabilities and senior citizens have been set up at the fair. State-run Sonali Bank and Janata Bank have also set up booths at the venue to help people pay their taxes.
The fair will remain open to visitors from 10am to 5pm.
