NBR moves to find out new taxpayers

Doulot Akter Mala The National Board of Revenue (NBR) has started collecting salary statements of service sector staffers under six categories as part of its move to net new taxpayers. The board has recently directed the central survey zone to conduct internal surveys in Dhaka, Chittagong, Rajshahi, Rangpur, Khulna, Barisal and Sylhet for the purpose. The NBR also asked the taxmen to collect names, addresses and Taxpayers Identification Number (TIN) of all company directors, latest date of registration of a company and its name from the Registrar of the Joint Stock Company. According to the instruction, central survey zone will issue letters to the selective sectors and companies seeking the necessary information. The taxmen will collect names, designation and salary statements of employees and officials of all brokerage houses located in seven divisional cities. They will also collect names of brokerage houses listed in Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) from all divisional towns. Employees, staffs and officials of all private universities, colleges, school (including English medium), engineering universities, engineering colleges, medical colleges, coaching centres, private hospitals, clinics, nursing homes and diagnostic centres will come under the scrutiny. Subscribers of Titas Gas Company, who have taken gas connections in the last five years, and names, designation and salary statements of employees of the company will be collected as per instruction of the board. Names of luxury hotels, restaurants, fast food shops and their employees' name, designations and salary statements will also be scrutinised for finding out new taxpayers. The move has been taken in a bid to increase the number of taxpayers following a poor tax-base of the country. Experts and economists say a number of people having taxable income do not pay income tax. The country's tax GDP ratio is only 9.0 per cent with less than 1.0 million income tax payers out of 150 million population. The revenue board also decided to conduct an external survey simultaneously with internal survey to reach the target of finding out 0.3 million new taxpayers in the current fiscal.