As things stand, there are far too many issues with our current tax system for the government to keep track of -- however, that is not an excuse to allow flagrant violations of tax law to go by unnoticed.
According to a recent Dhaka Tribune report, several major shops and other businesses in areas like Gopibagh and Tikatuli often conduct transactions worth large sums of money daily but were found failing to pay value added tax (VAT) to the government. It is also worth noting that this trend is prevalent for businesses regardless of which city corporation they fall under, and even in municipal regions.
This is nothing short of a failure on the part of the administration.
There has always been a mistrust on the part of the public when it comes to paying their taxes -- while unfortunate, the lack of faith in the system is nevertheless justified given just how badly our tax culture fails tax-payers while tacitly rewarding evaders. As a mode of revenue, VAT is an indirect form of tax which cannot be avoided, but ends up hurting the under-priveleged and the underclass the most.
To that end, there has always been a case against relying too much on indirect taxes and for the government to genuinely focus on widening our tax net by making key improvements to revenue collection itself. One glaring issue which has kept our tax net in a form of arrested development is the lack of fiscal transparency on the part of the administration, which leaves little room for tax-payers to understand how their hard-earned money is being spent.
But for now, instead of squeezing law-abiding tax-payers, it would behoove the government to simply enforce the law properly and go after obvious tax cheats such as the unscrupulous businesses hoarding VAT.
