NBR won't spare tax evaders

---

FE Report
The National Board of Revenue (NBR) has directed all the tax offices to prepare lists of those, who will not file their individual tax returns despite extension of deadline twice.
The deadline of individuals' tax return will expire on December 2 (Tomorrow).
"We will take stern actions against the tax evaders as per existing income tax rules after expiry of deadline," NBR chairman Muhammad Abdul Mazid told the FE, adding that tax dodgers should be punished for fair justice with the regular taxpayers.
The NBR will seriously launch drive against tax evaders from Monday after expiry of deadline Sunday, Mazid told the FE over phone from Sylhet.
He expressed his satisfaction over response of taxpayers in the last two days, saying "We have been getting higher response from individual taxpayers in the last week and it will peak on Sunday."
The tax offices will receive tax returns up to 8.0 pm on the last day of submission, the NBR chief said.
"The latest data of tax return submission in the last week has not yet been compiled, but we have a roughly estimate of about 45,000 tax returns having been filed in the first three days of the week," said NBR tax policy member Ali Ahmed.
"We are hopeful about a significant increase of tax return submission on the last day," he said.
Until November 22, the board received 3,89,335 individuals' tax returns for income tax amounting to Tk 5.58 billion.
In the last fiscal, the NBR received tax worth Tk 2.52 billion from 535,994 TIN (tax-payers identification number) holders.
The first deadline for individuals' tax return was set for September 30, that was extended up to October 31 and then again to November 30 for the second time.
Although the board has received higher tax revenue this year, but the number of taxpayers is still lower than that of the last fiscal.
But the revenue officials are optimistic about surpassing the number of tax returns recorded last year.
The NBR chief Friday visited land ports of Sylhet and held an interactive discussion with the customs authority.
There is an excellent coordination between the customs authority and the joint force to run the activities of the port smoothly, he said.
Meanwhile, the NBR has taken a fresh move to realise the evaded customs duties in a bid to boost its overall revenue collection.
The Customs Valuation and Internal Audit Commissionerate under the NBR has already referred a number of duty-evasion cases to the respective customs departments for taking necessary action in this connection, official sources said.
"The Commissionerate has put forwarded a number of duty evasion cases to the concerned authorities for next course of action," an official source said, adding that all the incidents of duty evasion were detected earlier at the import level.
Of them, three such audit reports involving Tk 12.65 million worth of duty evasion have been sent to the Rajshahi Customs, Excise and VAT Commissionerate alone, the sources mentioned.
The Customs Valuation and Internal Audit Commissionerate detected the incidents of duty evasion during the July-June period of the fiscal year (FY) 2005-06.
A local trader, according to sources, did not pay customs duty to the tune of over Tk 7.2 million while importing about 372,651 kilogrammes (kgs) of fruits.
On the other hand, two other local agencies evaded nearly Tk 5.4 million as customs duty while importing a total of 358,193 kilogrammes (kgs) of fruits through the Hili Customs Station, they added.
The current move to realise the evaded revenue has been initiated to help enhance the growth of customs duty, said an official.
After showing a poor performance in the last fiscal, the collection of customs duties marked a double-digit growth during the first four months of the current fiscal following some measures taken by the authorities for boosting its collection.
The collection of customs duty grew by 10.12 per cent during the July-October period of the FY 2007-08 over that of the matching period of last fiscal, official figures showed.
The NBR collected customs duty amounting to nearly Tk 27 billion during the last July-October period against Tk 24.51 billion in the corresponding period of the FY 2006-07.
The total collection target of customs duty has been fixed at Tk 93.54 billion while the total revenue collection under the NBR has been set at Tk 438.50 billion for the current fiscal, sources said.