The finance minister has put the National Board of Revenue (NBR) on their toes in the chase against an upraised revenue-collection target of Tk 2.03 trillion, asking for intensive performance review bimonthly.
"Since the tax revenue-collection target so high, it is a challenging task for the board to reach it without any downward revision," AMA Muhith said in an instruction dated July 29, 2016.
The NBR has to motivate the field-level officials, give proper direction and evaluate performance every two months to find out the areas where the tax authority should lay emphasis, the finance minister said in the reminder.
The revenue board has to take reform initiatives through evaluation of the revenue-collection situation every two months, the instruction says.
Following the directive, the NBR has decided to intensively monitor the tax revenue-collection performance in August, October, December, February, April and June. Research and statistics wing of the revenue board has taken the initiative to scrutinize the data.
In the meantime, the board also decided to give direction to the field-level tax offices to follow the instructions from the NBR and act accordingly.
The finance minister's instructions came after the NBR had sent a detailed situation paper on tax revenue collection in the FY 2015-16.
The target for last FY was Tk 1.76 trillion which was revised down to Tk 1.50 trillion later.
The NBR eventually surpassed its revised target by Tk 50 billion last fiscal.
On revenue target for FY 2015-16, the finance minister said: "My ambitious revenue target was not really an ambitious one. It was achievable."
But there was a lack of courage that was required to attain it, he wrote about the flipside.
For FY 2016-17, the government has projected collection of 59.7 per cent of its total resources from the NBR. Of the aggregate Tk 2.03 trillion, the Value Added Tax (VAT) wing has to collect Tk 727 billion, income tax Tk 719.40 billion and import duty Tk 557 billion.
The government every year is forced to revise original tax revenue target downward to fit in the trend in tax revenue collection compared to the projected ambitious growth.
Officials said country's target on gross domestic product (GDP), implementation of the Annual Development Programme (ADP), import of revenue-generating products are among the major indicators of the tax revenue-collection growth.
Last year, the NBR surpassed its revised revenue-collection target by posting 14 per cent higher growth compared to that of the corresponding year.
To achieve the target for FY 17, the taxmen have to achieve 30 per cent growth over the amount collected last year.
Officials said budgetary measures will help the NBR to collect a significant amount of tax revenue as payroll tax, withholding tax and Value Added Tax (VAT) from domestic sources.
Normal collection growth of tax revenue will be around 15 to 17 per cent as per current investment scenario and other economic contexts while the rest of the amount will have to be netted with intensified effort of the taxmen in field offices, said a senior tax official.
The government has expanded tax offices to upazila level, imparted training to the tax officials, launched digitisation move in the tax offices to expedite tax collection and offered better services to the taxpayers, he added.
Earlier, the NBR chairman, Md Nojibur Rahman, also expressed his optimism about achieving the tax-collection target for FY 2016-17.
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