The possibility of introducing an integrated joint audit by customs, VAT and income-tax officials in accordance with a global model is under review by the revenue board to help check tax dodging by large and medium-sized companies.
Officials said the National Board of Revenue (NBR) has planned to follow the World Customs Organisation (WCO) model that many countries adopt to integrate audit efforts of customs, Value Added Tax (VAT) and income-tax administration.
The NBR high-ups initiated the move to ensure information sharing among its three wings in a recent meeting on its premises.
The meeting discussed a WCO research paper titled 'cooperation between customs and tax administration: lesson learnt from RA (revenue authority)'.
Meeting sources said the tax authority decided to seek opinion from the field-level tax and customs officials to conduct impact analysis of the joint audit by its three wings.
The NBR officials are considering the possibility of introducing the information-sharing system between the income-tax, customs and VAT offices so that taxmen can crosscheck paid and actual payable tax by large and medium-sized companies.
Under the plan, taxmen would be able to find out people out of tax-net despite having taxable income through survey by income tax and VAT officials.
The NBR high-ups feel the cooperation among all the wings of NBR could help achieve 30 per cent growth in tax- revenue collection in the current fiscal year (FY).
The government has set Tk 1.76 trillion target for the NBR in the FY 2015-16.
The WCO study, conducted in 2009, focused on increasing tax revenue from exports and imports.
A senior tax official, who attended the meeting, said both the Large Taxpayers Units (LTU) under the income tax and VAT wing will be able to conduct the joint audit.
"All major companies are mostly under the supervision of those two wings that collect the lion's share of tax revenue," he said.
"Cooperation between field-level income-tax and VAT offices can help the NBR plug the holes of revenue leakage," he added.
The NBR plan on conducting joint audit would be shared with the corporate taxpayers, trade bodies and other stakeholders.
There would be separate work-plan of the income-tax, VAT and customs wings to implement the joint audit system, he said.
Officials said the board has already prepared a budget-implementation plan for three wings to achieve the revenue target for the current fiscal that boasts an ambitious Tk 2.95-trillion budget for the nation. Â
   doulot_akter@yahoo.com
Joint audit by 3 wings to check tax dodging by cos
Doulot Akter Mala | Published: August 02, 2015 00:00:00 | Updated: November 30, 2024 06:01:00
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