Tax education for govt officials underway

The National Board of Revenue (NBR) has moved to impart tax education to all government officials by incorporating a new topic in their training courses.  
The board has drafted possible course curriculum for Bangladesh Public Administration Centre, BCS Administration Academy, Financial Management Academy and other institutions that provide training on tax issues for government officials.
Tax officials said there is a need for making government officials aware of tax-related issues, especially tax at source, as many are unclear about the provision.
NBR chairman and secretary to the Internal Resources Division (IRD) Md Nojibur Rahman recently sent letters to the ministries of public administration, home and defense and principal secretary to the Prime Minister, highlighting the urgency.   
In the letter, the NBR chief urged the public administration secretary to instruct different government training centres of the country to include basic features of tax-revenue in the course curriculum.
Principal Secretary to the Prime Minister had earlier sent a letter, requesting the public administration secretary to incorporate tax education in different training centres of the government officials, officials said.
In the letter, the NBR chief stressed the need for arranging a day-long revenue dialogue in the training centres for senior-level and junior-level officials of different government, semi-government and autonomous bodies. The NBR chairman and its members will attend the dialogue.
The curricula include two sessions for tax at source, four to five sessions for basic and seven to eight sessions for entire curricula.  
Training could be imparted as certificate course, advanced training course and basic course, professional course, senior training course, departmental training course etc.
A 15-day training programme for defense was arranged in November on income tax-related issues.
Talking to the FE, a senior tax official said a large chunk of revenue comes as source tax from the project fund of government agencies.
"We've found that many of the government departments are unaware of deduction of tax at source, causing a large amount of losses to the public exchequer," he said.
Earlier, the revenue board detected some major loopholes in the collection of tax at source by government agencies.
To address the problems, the NBR chairman had sent letters to all secretaries of different ministries seeking their cooperation.
Under the existing rules, the implementing agencies of foreign-funded projects have to deduce taxes while making payments to any foreign contracting firms.
Tax at source, known as withholding tax or Tax Deducted at Source (TDS), contributes to more than half of the income tax collection.
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