Forming a tax commission and fully digitising the tax regime were stressed in budget-preparatory consultations convened Sunday by the revenue board, where ongoing corporate takeover of small businesses also figured high.
The country's cottage, small and medium entrepreneurs need further support as they are losing their business in the wake of big players taking over, the revenue-board chief told his audience.
"We have to support the SMEs to grow. The big players are gradually taking their places," said the National Board of Revenue (NBR) chairman, Abu Hena Md. Rahmatul Muneem.
The NBR chairman also sought support of the think-tanks in defining ways to safeguard them.
"There is a need for going deep to understand why the SMEs are not flourishing, what the problems are and where they stand now," he said.
There might be some rationales like enhanced quality and less production cost on behalf of the large-scale industries, he said, yet there are scopes of the SMEs.
"Many SMES are operating well in different countries by manufacturing quality products, as well as backward-linkage industries," he said.
He made the observations at the pre-budget meeting with several think-tanks, including SMAC Advisory Services, the Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD) and Bangladesh Economic Association (BEA) at the NBR office in Dhaka.
PwC Bangladesh Adviser Alamgir Hossain, director of SMAC Advisory Snehasish Barua, BEA General Secretary Professor Md. Aynul Islam, and Vice President of the International Business Forum of Bangladesh (IBFB) M.S. Siddiqui were among others present.
The SME Foundation Managing Director (additional charge), Salahuddin Mahmud , urged the NBR to allow the SMEs having annual turnover of around Tk 50 million to submit their VAT return every three months instead of every month at present.
The CPD suggested increasing the second slab of personal income tax from additional Tk 100,000 to Tk 200,000.
The think-tank also mentioned that the Finance Act of 2014 set a 1.0-percent surcharge on the goods produced by industries polluting the environment.
"This environment protection surcharge should be implemented completely in the FY 2025," the CPD says in one of its proposals. It also suggests that the corporate taxes in the tobacco sector should be ramped up gradually to achieve the target of tobacco-free Bangladesh by 2040.
BEA's Aynul Islam suggested forming a tax commission and proper digitisation of the country's tax regime.
A professor of economics at the University of Dhaka, Rumana Huque suggested making the sugar-sweetened beverages (SSB) costlier through policy measures considering their harmful effect on health.
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