Wealth surcharge must for owning more than one car

FE Report

The new provision of wealth surcharge in the income tax law would ensure equity in income tax payment this year, officials said.

In an attempt to collect more tax from the well-off people, the revenue board brought the provision in the current fiscal year's budget.

In the income tax return for the current fiscal year, taxpayers have to show if they have more than one motor car or house property with an aggregate amount of 8,000 square feet in the city corporation area.

These categories of taxpayers would fall under wealth surcharge this year, though their income is below the surcharge ceiling of Tk 22.5 million, officials said.

The wealth surcharge is applicable to the payable amount of income tax at a prescribed rate of the tax authority.

In a recently-issued guidelines, for filling out individuals' income tax return for Fiscal Year (FY) 2018-19, the National Board of Revenue (NBR) gave a detailed calculation of wealth surcharge.

Also, people involved in tobacco businesses will have to pay two types of surcharges.

In addition to the wealth surcharge, they have to pay 2.5 per cent surcharge on their income earned from the tobacco business.

Usually, taxpayers have to pay surcharge if their net assets exceed Tk 22.5 million.

From the current fiscal year, the taxpayers who do not have the said amount of assets have to pay surcharge if they have more than one motor car or house property above a certain limit, said an NBR official.

Tax officials would focus on this while scrutinising tax returns of the current fiscal year, he said.

Time for submission of tax returns by individual taxpayers starts from July 01 and would end on November 30, 2018.

For the current fiscal, the submission of tax return is also mandatory for people who are involved in ride-sharing business, the official said.

People having annual income above Tk 250,000 have to submit tax returns annually.

Talking to the FE, income tax (policy) member Kanon Kumar Roy said this year the income tax authority has offered some special benefits for the parents of physically challenged children.

Also, the hospitals and other public places have to count penal tax at a rate of 5.0 per cent for not having special benefit for the physically challenged people, he said.

According to the guidelines, tax return submission is mandatory also for some categories of individuals including shareholders of companies or firms, government officials having more than Tk 16,000 monthly salary, management or executives of company.

Also, people having a motor car, member of a club, running businesses obtaining trade licence, doctors, lawyers, income tax practitioners, Chartered Accountants, candidates for parliamentary elections, bidders of tender etc.

Income taxpayers who are enjoying reduced rate of tax must have to submit tax returns despite not having taxable income.

As per income tax law, taxpayers have to count penalty in case of missing deadline for submission of tax returns, even after submission of time petition.

Income taxpayers will be able to submit their tax returns with the help of the guidelines and without the help of the middleman.

There are three categories of tax return forms for individual taxpayers. The forms include-common form for all individual taxpayers, for salaried taxpayers and professionals and businesses having below Tk 0.3 million income, the guidelines said.

Taxpayers can submit tax returns in both general and universal self assessment system.

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