NBR teams on the hunt for bigwig tax evaders

Doulot Akter Mala | Published: August 16, 2008 00:00:00 | Updated: February 01, 2018 00:00:00

Special teams of the National Board of Revenue (NBR) have been working to identify city bigwigs who are evading taxes despite having large volume of taxable income, an NBR official said.

The NBR has formed the teams comprising officials from different field offices, who are normally under-utilised, he said.

Referring to the recent crackdown on shops, including jewelry, the official said: "The revenue board has initiated the drive to find out the incidences of tax evasion in the city as there is no political influence at the moment under the caretaker government."

As a part of government's relentless effort to enhance tax-base, the NBR has launched a motivational campaign to reach marginal taxpayers across the country, he said adding, but many with large amount of untaxed income remain unaccounted for, he said.

In order to maintain the existing upward trend of income tax growth, the board has taken some effective moves at the outset of the current fiscal.

In the current fiscal budget, the government has offered opportunity for declaring undisclosed income with payment of penalty. The offer will continue up to October next.

But the taxpayers have not shown interest to respond to the government's offer. However, the time for submission of tax return will expire in September next.

Tax officials said individual taxpayers generally rush to the tax offices for filing tax returns at the last moment every year. They expressed the hope that the people will be more tax compliant this year and give a boost to revenue generation.

In the first month of current fiscal, the revenue collection grew by over 22 per cent, led by customs department.

Income tax collection of NBR dropped to 3.0 per cent, from earlier 35 per cent in the just concluded fiscal, as it only realised Tk 5.50 billion in July.

The government has set a target of Tk 130.54 billion for income tax department, which is 24 per cent of the aggregate revenue collection target of Tk 545 billion for current fiscal.