Online platform ready for most taxpayers

Most of the individual taxpayers, who submit income tax returns physically every year, will be able to avail the convenience of online platform to file their returns this year.
However, the ones who have paid tax at source and need to adjust it in the return form and have refund claims will not be able to take the advantage of the eReturn facility now, officials said.
They will be able to prepare their returns on their own in the portal taking help of the in-built tax calculation facilities.
They would then take a print out and attach relevant documents manually to submit the returns physically in their respective tax offices.
Around 80 per cent of the income tax returns are filed by people not having taxable income while 10 per cent does not require adjustment of source tax or refund claim in the return, according to an NBR analysis.
The deadline for submission of the income tax returns by individual taxpayers expires on November 30 every year.
Filing tax return is mandatory for all of the 6.5 million Taxpayers Identification Number (TIN) holders as per the Income Tax Ordinance - 1984, barring few exceptions.
Last year, some 2.4 million individuals had submitted their returns to the NBR.
"The newly launched e-return system would help 90 per cent of the existing individual taxpayers file their returns from anywhere," a senior income tax official told the FE.
The eReturn portal (etaxnbr.gov.bd) of the National Board of Revenue (NBR) was launched on October 10 last and has already started getting impressive response from the taxpayers.
As of Monday, 13,570 individual taxpayers registered their accounts in the e-return portal.
Some 3,725 prepared their tax returns in the system after obtaining the user identification numbers and passwords while 2,837 taxpayers submitted their tax returns in the portal.
The taxpayers can now calculate their applicable tax, prepare the return form and submit it by logging in the web portal.
They would also get the acknowledgment slip and tax certificate instantly after submitting the returns through the system subject to approval by the taxmen, the tax official said.
Even applications requesting time extension to submit tax returns after the deadline can be submitted online, he added. The approval of time petition would be automatically generated if the taxmen approve it.
He said the taxpayers having assets valued less than Tk 4.0 million do not require submitting any document under the income tax ordinance and they would also be able to take advantage of the online return submission system.
The tax official said the system has been developed by a group of taxmen without any cost.
The NBR officials said a group of taxmen have developed the system on their own expertise that involved no additional cost, following failure of two initiatives under MIST and Bitax funded by donors involving around Tk 300 million and Tk 800 million respectively.

[email protected]