As is extent of revenue earnings, so is quality of public services

From the very beginning of emerging as an independent country in the world, the government of Bangladesh tried to provide free services to the nation in health and education sectors. No other country, even a developed one in the world can claim proudly like Bangladesh providing free services in health and education sectors. In the recent years government has also introduced social security network programs of providing allowances to the widows, pregnant women, freedom fighters, old people and disabled people. So, people's aspirations and expectations here in Bangladesh regarding assurances of public services as well as benefits in terms of ensuring social security are high. People from all sections of the society undoubtedly want safe and sound existence in houses and working places, comfortable and safe journey in travelling, available facilities for amusement and recreation, load shedding free continuous electricity facility, adequate facilities of getting gas and water, better quality services from health and education sectors and law enforcing agencies etc.  Rendering quality services to the people in the said areas is very much related to government earnings as well as professionalism of service providers. No government in the world can ever fulfil its people's demands for smooth, comfortable, safe and complicacy free living in the society without generating significant amount of income. With a view to fulfilling people's demands, the government  needs to construct and repair roads, flyovers and bridges, establish new power plants for electricity or renovate or repair existing power plants for meeting electricity demand and take initiatives for exploring new gas fields. The government also needs to develop health sector by increasing doctors and nurses and supplying latest diagnostic equipments and medicines with other logistic supports in the hospitals and health complexes, develop education sector through increasing trained teachers with facilities for providing quality teaching-learning, construct or establish park or amusement spots and ensure peaceful situation of law and order through appointing rational numbers of law enforcers with adequate modern equipment. To implement these massive development programs the government requires huge amount of money to spend. The government has two alternatives to enhancing income generation for national uplift. Either government has to borrow from rich countries and international financial agencies with high interest or has to enhance revenue income utilizing internal resources. The first one is cost effective as it definitely increases debt burden for the people as well as requires meeting irrelevant, irrational and unethically imposed terms and conditions by the lending agencies. So, government badly depends on local resources for enhancing income to meet huge expenses for implementing massive development activities that tend to ensure better quality services to the people rather than reducing reliance on foreign aid. Tax is the reliable, inclusive and strong source of generating income for the government from internal sources. Income tax, VAT and customs are the three vital sources of collecting revenues from tax. Currently, most of the revenue earnings come from the income tax category, which in the past came from customs. In near future, when a free trade world will effectively be executed, then Income Tax will be first and VAT will be in second position in terms of generating income.

Government collects tax for serving the people and people also pay tax from a sense of social responsibilities with the feeling of doing something for the country. People firmly believe as well as expect that government must ensure quality services in the public service providing organizations along with meeting all possible facilities for safe and comfortable existence of living in the society in exchange for paying tax. People of the country are very much positive for contributing to the income generating process of the government with the hope that the government must utilize their contribution for meeting desired requirement of living maintaining quality standards in safe and hazard free environment like other developed countries' citizens. Rather than children, students, unemployed persons, beggars and old people, all other people ie all eligible people have the ability of contributing for the country with the feeling of doing something for themselves and the nation too. This will also establish their ownership on all public assets, resources and service providing institutions that tend to empower them for ensuring proper utilization and protection of these. People have shown their spontaneous interest to pay income tax this year in the income tax fair that achieved revenue earnings of Tk 16,753,073,000 (1675 crore 30 lakh 73 thousand). But the target of the NBR was 15 billion taka. This amount of revenue earnings were earned by the government only in the six days duration of income tax fair at division level and three days at district level. We have only 1.80 million people who have Electronic Tax Identification Number (e-TIN) and some of them are not eligible for paying tax rather than submitting tax return. In the country of more than 160 million people, the numbers of tax paying people are very poor and insignificant too. Moreover some people willfully attempt to evade paying income taxes or intentionally fail to file income tax return. Some of the tax payers willfully fail to pay due taxes or intentionally fail to report actual income received. As a result the government fails to earn actual amount of revenue notwithstanding bringing a few number of taxpayers under income tax arena. Government could earn more revenue earnings from income tax if all the eligible persons could be brought under income tax payment as well as professionals like doctors, engineers, businessmen, industrialists, owners of private hospitals/clinics and educational institutions, singers, actors/actresses etc honestly report their actual annual income in the tax return and pay income taxes accordingly. VAT is another vital source of generating income of the government. Due to negligence of tax department some of the dishonest businessmen are depriving the government of earning actual amount of revenue from VAT each year. Lack of people's awareness is also responsible for this to happen as people don't take receipts from the shops for buying products.

To expand the extent of public services and social security network as well as to consolidate existing services, government desperately needs to increase its revenue earnings. Bringing all the eligible persons under income tax payment according to their actual annual income, the government also needs to strengthen monitoring system for generating revenues from VAT with the help of police and tax department officials. Government may supply electronic cash machine to all shop owners/sellers as well as ensure accountability of buyers and sellers making arrangements of regular checking of taking or giving receipts. Besides ensuring this, the government may take the initiatives of generating revenues by collecting donations from the capable people motivating them with the feeling of doing something for the country in exchange for providing direct first track services to them in some areas i.e. health, education, business, travel etc.

Government may introduce HEB card (Health and Education Benefit card) to the families (households) of the country in exchange for contributing or donating a meagre amount of money as token according to their ability of annual earnings. Those who are service-holders may contribute more amount of money to get HEB card as they receive a certain amount of money as medical and education allowances from government or the appointing authority. The industrialists, businessmen and well-to-do persons of the community may contribute a significant amount of money to get and renew HEB card. HEB cards should be issued to the heads of the families. Under a card all dependants of the family should give an identity number each. In view of receiving and renewing HEB card the amount of token contribution may be considered for poor section of the community. It may not be impossible for the lowest income-earning people to contribute a token amount of money to establish their ownership as we can see that almost all of them are using mobile phone and their standard of living is developing too. Those who have no income should be provided with HEB card free of cost. It may be mandatory for all the families to possess HEB card and without having HEB card nobody or his/her family members can be entitled to receive medical and education facilities from both public and private service providers. It could be better for having the provision that without HEB card nobody will get any kind of government facilities and allowances. The system should be completely software based and may authorize the Union Parishad to run the system which has expertise on running ICT based programs at field level. The whole system may interlink nationally so that public and private sector service providers may utilize and preserve information of the card. The card is renewable for each year. Introducing HEB card government may earn a significant amount of money each year and utilize the money only in the health and education sectors with a view to providing highest quality services to the card beneficiaries.

Last but not the least officials concerned to public and private service providing agencies should develop professionalism within them and should perform duties honestly to provide quality services to the nationals who are contributing spontaneously for the country to generating revenue.

The writer is working for primary education in Bangladesh.

Email: auparbayazidkhan@gmail.com