Tax payment by the city's physicians grew 30 per cent in the fiscal year (FY) 2016-17 as compared to the previous FY, thanks to their increased income and motivational campaign by the taxmen.
Submission of income tax returns by them also increased by 39.52 per cent during the period under review.
The physicians, who are practising in Dhaka city, contributed a major portion of the revenue collected from the professionals, tax officials said. They paid Tk 867 million in the last FY against Tk 667 million in FY 2015-16.
Among the city's practising physicians, some 17,735 have electronic taxpayers Identification numbers (eTINs). Of them, 14,611 submitted the returns in Fiscal Year 2016-17, according to latest data compiled by the concerned tax zone-10.
The zone is a dedicated tax office for supervising and monitoring tax payments by physicians, who are practicing in the capital.
In FY 2014-15, some 10,057 physicians had submitted tax returns out of 12,756 TIN holders.
Apurba Kanti Das, income tax commissioner of the tax zone, said the physicians were one of the most tax-compliant professionals at present as the taxmen could motivate them for tax payment.
"We're intensively monitoring the referral fees of physicians that have not been addressed properly earlier. Many doctors were also unaware about payment of tax from their referral fees," he said.
Physicians get fees as they refer patients to particular diagnostic centres or other health service providers.
The taxmen monitor chambers to find out the number of patients visiting the doctors and directly communicate with them to pay tax, he said, adding that the doctors in that case did not require taking help from the tax lawyers.
The commissioner said the tax officials have adopted a work plan of visiting large health service providing organisations to motivate those to pay tax.
"A total of 589 large health service providing entities are in the list of the taxmen. They have a plan to build awareness among the physicians having taxable income and motivate them to pay the actual amount of tax," he said.
Income tax teams will visit the organisations and hold workshop to build awareness among the physicians about the importance of tax payment. The tax authority has also decided to prepare a database of physicians in the city.
Currently, there is no database about the number of physicians practicing in the country.
Physicians are one of the highly-paid taxpayers among the individual professional taxpayers, officials said. Around 1,000 physicians in Dhaka pay tax in the highest slab (30 per cent) for the individual taxpayers.
Last year, five physicians received recognition from the NBR as the highest individual taxpayers.
Swadhinata Chikishok Parishad (SHACHIP) president Dr Iqbal Arslan said roughly there are some 90,000 MBBS and dental doctors in the country, but many of them are not in practice -- either deceased or left the profession.
There is no specific number of the physicians working in Dhaka only, he said.
Tax officials said the number of registered doctors would be much higher than that of the actual number of taxpayers.
They said the tax authority will sit with the BMDC to hold motivational programme. There are many entry-level doctors and some are old-aged who do not practice at present.
The taxmen will expand the net by conducting spot assessment for the professionals, including doctors, they said.
In FY 2016-17, Tax Zone-10 collected Tk 7.90 billion, higher than the period's target of Tk 7.65 billion.
doulot_akter@yahoo.com
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