NBR goes further deep to fetch income tax

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Doulot Akter Mala
The National Board of Revenue (NBR) will conduct an internal survey in public and private companies, non-government organisations (NGOs) and educational institutions in a bid to boost income tax collection and widen tax net in the current fiscal.
The board has recently instructed all tax offices in Dhaka, Chittagong, Khulna, Sylhet, Rajshahi, Barishal and Rangpur to intensify internal survey along with ongoing external survey.
Officials said internal survey is one of the strategies of the tax department to increase the number of income tax payers.
Tax offices of the board have already started collecting information from the selected companies to add new taxpayers, said an official.
Taxmen will collect lists of employees and staffs of those companies and check their tax payment status, he said.
Revenue board has geared up its move to detect tax evasion and include new taxpayers from this month as it feared a shortfall of income tax collection in the second half of the current fiscal, he added.
Time for filing tax returns by individual and most of the companies expired in November-December. There might be a sluggish trend in the third quarter of the current fiscal unless the board could initiate fresh move to increase tax collection, the official said.
Income tax collection marked an impressive growth of about 23 per cent in the first six months of the current fiscal. Income tax department collected Tk 60.39 billion taxes in July-December period against Tk 49.23 billion in the previous fiscal.
"We have collected 19 per cent more revenue compared to the same period of previous fiscal with the relentless effort of taxmen," said an income tax official.
The government has set Tk 165 billion target for the income tax collection in the current fiscal.
The revenue board has collected only 37 per cent of its target in the first half although the revenue board is hopeful about surpassing income tax target by end of this fiscal.