Taxmen plan raids to trace evaders

Government's tax authority plans to raid some organisations on a pilot basis to trace foreign workers evading taxes allegedly with the connivance of the employers.
Officials said the move came after taxmen had found a significant increase in foreign employees in different organisations and companies but the number of foreign taxpayers staying almost steady at around 10,000 during the last two years.
Allegations are rife that a section of foreign employees came to Bangladesh on tourist visa for avoiding tax payment.
The income-tax authority gets data about the foreign employees from Bangladesh Investment Development Authority (BIDA) and works on the basis of that information.
A senior tax official said absence of data hinders the activity of taxmen to crosscheck the BIDA-furnished information.
A taskforce of the National Board of Revenue (NBR) is working for preparing an automated databank on foreigners doing jobs in the country.
Once the databank is formed, each of the foreigners may have to obtain a certain number from the NBR so that tax authority can trace their entry and exist.
The taskforce in its meeting last year recommended raiding some companies for finding out their actual foreign employees, officials said.
Taxmen are contemplating implementing the recommendation next month by paying visit to least one organization for a case study, they said.
The NBR will also reconstitute the taskforce as two members of the body recently went on retirement.
"We have planned to sign a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the immigration department to ensure information sharing on the foreign nationals," the official said.
It has been alleged that local employers help the foreign nationals to evade tax by renewing tourist visa, instead of obtaining employment visa, he added.
Several steps of the NBR including setting up tax-desk in the airports and land ports also failed to perform as per expectation, he added.
"Income-tax desk in airport collected tax from foreign nationals in the first two months but now cannot perform well due to its location and lack of cooperation from immigration authority," he added.
Taxmen collected around Tk 60 million in income tax from 150 foreign nationals in July-August 2016 from the check-posts established at airports and Benapole land port.
In July 2016, the NBR set up four income-tax check-posts in Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport, Dhaka, Shah Amanat International Airport, Chittagong, MAG Osmani International Airport in Sylhet and Benapole land port.
Foreign nationals have to show tax-clearance certificates at the income-tax counters at the checkpoints.
Officials said as the desk is located in a distant place in the airport and immigration authority hardly asks for the tax-clearance certificate of the departing foreign workers, many of the foreigners fail to notice the tax check-posts at the airport as these are placed in a corner.
The counters of the check-posts should be located just beside the immigration desk, he added.
Earlier, the revenue board had sent a letter to the Civil Aviation Authority to allocate a visible place for relocating the income-tax check-posts at the airports.
As per income-tax ordinance, foreign workers are required to pay 30 per cent tax on their incomes. There is no tax ceiling for them.
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