The National Board of Revenue (NBR) is set to extend the deadline for submission of income tax returns for 2014-15 tax-year by individual taxpayers following a poor trend in submission of tax returns until Thursday.
The deadline is scheduled to expire on November 2 (Sunday).
According to an unofficial data, less than 5,00,000 individual taxpayers out of 1.7 million TIN holders have so far submitted their tax returns in their respective tax offices.
Tax officials said the deadline may be extended by 15 days to one month, in the second phase. The NBR will issue an order Sunday by extending the time. The timeframe for extension is yet to be finalised by the board.
Officials said many of the trade associations and professionals, including lawyers, requested the NBR to extend the deadline by another one to two months due to public holidays for Eid-Ul Azha and Durga Puja.
The recent shutdowns (hartals) by a political party may be also taken into consideration for extension of the deadline.
Last year, the NBR received 1.0 million tax returns from the individual taxpayers out of around 1.7 million valid TIN (taxpayer's identification number) holders in the country.
Talking to the FE Thursday, a senior NBR official said the individuals' tax returns should be at least 1.3 million this year as some 3,00,000 new taxpayers obtained online TIN, known as e-TIN, last year.
On the last day, there was no rush of taxpayers in the zonal offices of the income tax department for submission of tax returns. Officials said most of them have become habituated with the extension of deadline twice or thrice a year.
In every tax year, the NBR is forced to extend its scheduled deadline September 30 being pursued by cross section of people. Â
According to the income tax law, a taxpayer can obtain extension of time by submitting application to the respective deputy commissioner of taxes.
Deputy Commissioner of Taxes (DCT) can allow three months' additional time to an individual taxpayer for submission of tax returns.
The DCT can also allow another three months, in case of any inconvenience of the taxpayers, with the approval of joint commissioner.
Taxmen can impose penal taxes in case of missing deadline for submission of income tax returns. There is a provision of charging penalty at Tk 1000 at a time and Tk 50 per day in case of missing the deadline.
Submission of tax returns is mandatory for people having trade licence and bank accounts, participating tenders of government, semi-government, autonomous or local authorities, having taxable income in any year in the last three consecutive years, any non-government organisations registered with the NGO affairs bureau, all members of chamber of commerce and industries or trade associations, having taxable income in the last income year, inhabitants of city corporation, pauroshava or district cities having personal car, members of any club registered with the Value Added Tax (VAT) department and election candidates of pauroshava, city corporation or national parliamentary elections.
E-TIN holders who obtained the online tax registration number before June 30, 2014 have to submit tax returns in the tax-year 2014-15.
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