JS body suggests tax cards, benefits to taxpayers

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FE Report
The standing committee on finance ministry recommended Tuesday that the government provide tax cards to all taxpayers and also provide them some non-cash benefits.
It also proposed increase in car registration fees to boost the revenue income of the government, said Mr AHM Mostafa Kamal, Chairman of the Jatiya Sangsad (JS) standing committee after a meeting of the body on the day.
The government in the next budget should reduce the income tax rate and rather widen the tax net while composition of the income tax tribunal should be revised, he said.
The businessman-turned-politician said the global recession posed the biggest threat to the current budget, but in the next budget inflation would replace it.
"Inflation is creeping up in India and Pakistan to 10.5 per cent and 12.5 per cent respectively and the trend also heads upwards in Bangladesh," he said.
The point-to-point inflation was recorded at 9.06 per cent in February with food inflation reaching 12.32 per cent in urban areas.
"The committee urged the finance minister to consider inflation as the biggest challenge and formulate the budget keeping in mind containment of that social malice," he added.
The committee observed that short-term plans to increase power supply are not the right step, the government should revise it to get the maximum benefit, Mr Kamal said.
Rental or peaking power plants are set up for a short period of time and the per unit cost of such plants is higher, but if these plants are made on the build-operate-transfer (BOT) basis, the effective unit cost will be lower, he said.
The chairman of the JS body regretted that untaxed money was entering the capital market and pushing up the market capital.
"In January of last year the market cap was Tk 1.1 trillion, but now it stands at Tk 2.28 trillion and the turnover is also increasing everyday. The turnover, which once stood at Tk 3 billion, has now crossed Tk 10 billion," he said.
The government allowed legalisation of undisclosed money in the budget keeping in mind that the money would go to the productive sector, but in reality, it did not happen, he added.