Detailed information of around 0.6 million people has recently been sent to field-level tax offices to find out those having tax identification numbers (TIN) did not file their income tax returns and also to bring those, despite having taxable income, remained outside the tax net. Central survey zone of the National Board of Revenue (NBR), under its internal survey activities, has collected data about these two categories of people. A top tax official said the survey zone has collected the information from Dhaka Power Distribution Company, RAJUK, different banks and financial institutions, credit card providers, and other relevant agencies, including those where the use of TIN is mandatory. NBR has instructed the field-level income tax offices to detect the non-compliant -- those who do not submit their income tax returns -- TIN-holders and also potential new taxpayers on the basis of the information, he said. The government has set a target of including 0.5 million taxpayers this year though conducting external and internal survey. "We have found less than 0.13 million taxpayers until February. The process is going on at a slow pace, as we have focused on quality of the survey rather than quantity," he said. All of the recently surveyed taxpayers obtained TIN-numbers and came directly under tax-net. Tax officials said it would be difficult for the revenue board to achieve the target of including 0.5 million new taxpayers. At present, the number of TIN-holders stands at 3.0 million, but among them, only less than 1.0 million are taxpayers. Another income tax official said NBR has moved towards digitalisation for ensuring a transparent tax administration. All fake and duplicate TIN-holders will be found out and eliminated from the tax-net after digitalisation. The NBR, to mention, had earlier given an opportunity to such 'fake' and duplicate TIN holders to set their respective tax records in a proper and correct form through written applications filed with the offices the deputy commissioners of taxes. It is yet not known how many such corrections were made by the deadline that the NBR had set for that. The NBR now considers that the mismatch between the numbers of taxpayers and TIN-holders will significantly reduce after it completes its process of follow-up actions on the central zone survey. NBR has to bring all those having annual income above the exempted limit under tax-net though survey, the NBR official said. "There might be some regular taxpayers in the data of 0.6 million people. NBR will only detect the people who obtained TIN-numbers for different services, but are not paying tax," he added.
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