The National Board of Revenue (NBR) says they have found 89,672 companies without a TIN number in the past 21 months.
The Corporate Compliance Task Force wing of NBR is working strictly to bring them under TIN registration.
According to NBR’s latest report, in June 2020, a total of 76,756 business entities had TIN, but as of mid-April 2022, it has increased to 1,66,428.
That means that NBR’s Corporate Compliance Task Force wing has found 89,672 new companies in just 21 months.
On the other hand, according to the latest Registrar of Joint Stock Companies and Firms (RJSC) estimates, the number of public-private, foreign and individual companies across the country stood at 1,97,000 till March 31.
It is mandatory for all companies registered under the Companies Act to take TIN and return it at the end of the year.
According to the latest NBR estimates, 30,000 companies have not yet taken TIN.
Speaking to various officials of this special wing they said although these companies were registered with the Registrar of Joint Stock Companies and Firms (RJSC), they did not get the tax identification number from the NBR.
So, first of all, the Corporate Compliance Task Force works to identify the companies without TIN by taking the list from RJSC. These companies were then forced to take TIN.
And as a result, the number of business entities with TIN has also increased.
The National Board of Revenue has formed this high-powered task force to bring all registered public and private limited companies under the tax net to ensure the submission of income tax returns and prevent the submission of fake audit reports.
This task force began its work in August 2020.
At that time, it found that more than 56% of the firms did not have taxpayers’ identification numbers (TIN). Even more than 55% of business entities having TINs do not pay income tax.
Asked about the activities of the wing, an official of NBR's Corporate Compliance Task Force who did not want to be named told Dhaka Tribune that: “After forming (Corporate Compliance Task Force) in August 2020, we submitted a preliminary report in the middle of last year after working for the first year. In that report, we disclosed that many companies don't submit their tax returns year after year, most of them do not have a TIN certificate.”
“In addition, multiple companies have registered with RJSC using the same address. But in reality, the companies are not at that address.”
Citing the issue as an example, he said: “1,400 companies have registered using only two addresses in Karwan Bazar. As we have seen in the investigation, these companies were registered using the address of the legal consulting firm.”
“Again, several industrial groups operated more than one company but did not take separate TIN. For example, under an industrial group in Chittagong, they have 46 active companies but only four of them have had valid TINs in their names,” the official said.
