The National Board of Revenue (NBR) may reduce the tax slab for individual taxpayers to bring more people under tax net instead of increasing the tax-free threshold, said its chief Wednesday.
"The government considers to slash the minimum tax slab to 5.0 per cent from existing 10 per cent for individual taxpayers as per pre-budget proposals", said NBR chairman Md Mosharraf Hossain Bhuiyan.
"We are not willing to increase the tax-free ceiling for individual taxpayers in the budget," he said at a pre-budget meeting with the members of Economic Reporters Forum (ERF), held in the NBR premises.
The NBR chairman also pledged to bring Uber and CNG auto rickshaw operation under tax net. Responding to a question on mismatch of last FY's revenue collection data between two government entities, the NBR chairman said the board would consider Tk 1.71 trillion as actual tax receipt of the last year.
However, the NBR declared earlier that it had achieved tax revenue collection target Tk 1.85 trillion in last FY.
The NBR chairman said some of the field level tax offices showed the amount as tax receipt to meet the target before receiving the actual amount of tax.
"This would not happen this year. I have given instruction to the field offices to show actual tax receipt in the revenue collection figure," he said. He said the NBR would intensify its effort to check tendency for avoiding VAT payment, resolve pending revenue cases, popularise Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) to achieve revenue collection target.
In the meeting, ERF members proposed to ensure declaration of actual value of land to the tax authority, offer tax exemption for import of 'school buses' to reduce traffic jam, increase tax-free threshold for individual taxpayers, offer tax rebate for education expenditure of children, widen tax gap for listed and non-listed companies, combat tax evasion by multinational companies.
NBR chairman said the proposal for duty-free import of school buses is a good one and can be considered seriously.
ERF president Saif Islam Dial, general secretary Ziaur Rahman, NBR members Kanon Kumar Roy, Feroz Shah Alam, Rezaul Hassan, among others, attended the meeting.
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