The upcoming national budget will not be a typical one as the National Board of Revenue (NBR) is preparing it in a participatory manner, said NBR chief Md Mosharraf Hossain Bhuiyan on Tuesday.
The NBR is framing the fiscal policy through discussion with people from all strata including investors and think tanks he said while speaking at a luncheon meeting of the American Chamber of Commerce in Bangladesh (AmCham) at a city hotel.
"You will see some reflections of the discussion on the fiscal policy of the next budget," he added.
Mr Bhuiyan said the next budget will be Tk 170 billion higher than that of the current fiscal year's budget.
AmCham president Md Nurul Islam moderated the programme and delivered welcome speech in the meeting.
The AmCham president proposed reducing corporate tax rates, devising favourable policy to attract foreign direct investment (FDI), ensuring enabling environment for investors, improving infrastructure and strengthening public-private initiative.
The NBR chairman said the revenue board would lay emphasis on automation and introduction of Electronic Cash Register (ECR) by next one year.
Although the use of ECR was made compulsory for businesses in 2007-08, still it remained partially implemented.
"Our people are not very much willing to implement ECR as there will be no scope of bargaining," he said.
The NBR chairman said many of the laws and rules of NBR remained unimplemented due to non-cooperation of some quarters as well as negligence of the government.
There are some grey areas which should be addressed properly including prospect of VAT to raise revenue collection, he said.
Many businesses collect VAT from the consumers, but they do not deposit it with the public exchequer fearing that their profit would shrink, he said.
"The NBR will take stringent measures in this regard," he warned.
Expansion of the tax net would be prioritised rather than squeezing tax from the existing taxpayers, he added.
Union council chairman spends 20/30 million taka in election. But they are yet to come under the tax net, he said. He, however, vowed to check harassment of the taxpayers by the taxmen.
Former Amcham president Aftab-ul Islam suggested that the NBR focus on automation to increase the country's tax-GDP ratio, which is lower than Nepal and Bhutan.
The NBR chairman said there is no link between the new VAT law that the government deferred by two years until 2019, and ECR.
"ECR has already been made compulsory for businesses. But existing ECRs are not updated and linked with the automated system," he said. Specification for importing new ECR machines has already been sent and it would be implemented within next one year, he added.
AmCham vice-president Shadab Ahmed Khan delivered vote of thanks at the programme.
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