Response from individual taxpayers unsatisfactory

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Doulot Akter Mala
Response from individual taxpayers and undisclosed money holders is hardly encouraging as only 92,000 people paid tax worth Tk 4.20 billion while 1850 persons and companies formalised Tk 1.50 billion until now.
Time for both individuals' tax return and formalising of lawfully earned undisclosed income will expire on October 31 but response from the taxpayers is not satisfactory until now, said a tax official.
The National Board of Revenue (NBR) has mopped up tax worth Tk 200 million (20 cr) from the offer that the Caretaker Government declared at the beginning of current fiscal for July-October period.
In the last fiscal, the NBR collected Tk 7.39 billion tax from 0.64 million individual taxpayers, which was only Tk 2.52 billion from 0.53 taxpayers in 2006-07.
People having undisclosed income will have to pay 7.0 per cent penal tax in addition to normal tax rate to declare undisclosed income.
Under the similar opportunity for declaring undisclosed income last year, the NBR mopped up tax worth Tk 8.02 billion from the undisclosed income where 42,459 people declared Tk 52.13 billion.
Meanwhile, different tax offices and the NBR have been receiving huge requests to further extend the time for normal tax return, but there is no plea for extending the time for undisclosed income.
Tax officials expressed their hope that number of tax returns would double in the next three days and it would increase in the last week as usual like every year.
Until September 11, only 40,000 individual tax-payers filed their tax return worth nearly Tk 3.6 billion.
Although revenue officials expected a huge rush of tax-payers in October, the last month for both submission of individuals' tax return and formalising undisclosed income, the situation seemed dull until now.
The NBR has no plan to extend the time for individual tax return further, but if the trend seems to slow then it will have to re-think, a tax official said.
The NBR has extended the individuals' tax return time by one month up to October 30 following poor response of the tax-payers.