Higher tax collection

Government remains in a specially tight situation in the current year from not getting enough external assistance from the donors. The flow of aid resources continue to be specially lean. Its attempts to contract loans from multilateral lending bodies to plug growing resource gaps in its budget are also proving to be not smooth from the conditions being attached to be able to access them. Thus, government hardly has any other option than gearing up its taxation drive within the country to garner enough resources in support of its budget-making activities and plans for expenditure. But it is a big question mark whether the National Board of Revenue (NBR) in its present state can contribute effectively to this need of harnessing much greater revenues. Besides, it has to be extra careful not to be seen as hounding individuals and institutions for more taxes without justifying the same. First of all, taxation efforts are automatically made easy when the economy grows creating more identifiable institutions and individuals who become eligible for paying taxes. But Bangladesh has not been growing strongly enough to support a major hard and unrelenting taxation drive on any great number of new or potential taxpayers. A move in that direction could only backfire and even stifle industrialization or enterprising. People are also encouraged to pay more taxes when they can see for themselves that the sacrifices made by them through paying taxes leading to higher revenue collections, by the government, are not appreciated well. Such revenues are, thus, not always found to be properly spent for their benefits. A culture of paying taxes enthusiastically also develops from a hassle-free environment. Therefore, the government necessarily also has to pay attention to such areas as well, for succeeding in its efforts for higher tax collection. M A Hashem Bara Magbazar, Dhaka