National
Board of Revenue (NBR) Chairman Md Abdur Rahman Khan today (Monday, September
23) said that the revenue board is pledge-bound to supplement the government's
efforts to build a discrimination-free and corruption-free country talking
alongside all concerned.
"Definitely,
we want to build a discrimination-free and corruption-free Bangladesh and the NBR
is pledge-bound in this regard. We'll accomplish the task taking alongside
all," he said.
Rahman
said this while talking to reporters after the official launching of the new
e-Return Service Centre at the NBR Bhaban in the capital's Agargaon area this
morning.
Md
Abdur Rahman Khan, along with Michal Krejza, Head of Cooperation, Delegation of
the EU to Bangladesh, formally opened this new service center.
Asked
how long it would take to accomplish such task, Rahman said it is hard to say
how long it would take adding, "We're fine tuning everything
gradually."
Answering
to a question on what would be the consequences of those who have already
availed the facility for whitening undisclosed money before the interim
government scrapped such provision, the NBR Chairman said if any taxpayer
availed such facility before the provision was repealed, then he would get such
facility as per the law.
"We
won't go beyond the jurisdiction of law. As long as the law was in force, the
facility was legal," he added.
Rahman
said when the provision was scrapped by this interim government, then it became
illegal from that moment.
In
replying to another question, the revenue board boss suggested the taxpayers to
make their mobile phone SIMs biometric and thus exercise submission of their
returns through online.
Out
of the country's total taxpayers of some 1.04 crore, he said some 44 lakh
usually submit their returns. "We want to raise the number of returns, if
they submit returns online, then it will be easier for them.
"We
want to hear directly from the taxpayers what kind of problems they are facing
while submitting returns through online and then we'll take action
promptly," he said.
Asked
about the measures taken by the NBR to avert tax evasion, Rahman said it
matters with the capacity as it is not possible to deal with all things at a
time.
"We're
giving priority to those cases and individuals against whom we're getting
specific data and information from various sources like media and intelligence
and such efforts will definitely continue against the corporate taxpayers. It's
routine work actually...it's not possible in one go."
About
the performances of tax zones on the drives against the large tax evaders, he
said the time has just started after the formation of the interim government as
it takes some time for taking necessary preparations.
Responding
to another question, the revenue board chief said, the NBR has some image
crisis that when it selects tax files for scrutinizing, then quite often the
exercise becomes not objective. "We often receive such kind of objections
from the taxpayers. For this, we want to select auditing of tax files without
the intervention of human to avert any question. So, we'll make such selection
through digitized method."
He
said the common philosophy is that they would trace out those who evade tax and
thus take legal action and bring back the revenues to the government exchequer.
Asked
whether the tariff on various commodities would be reviewed, he said it would
be looked into during the budgetary process.
"Some
reforms will take place in the revenue sector and those won't be carried out in
one go rather gradually," he said.
About
the justification of existing tax-free income ceiling, the NBR chief said if
the ceiling is raised further, then a big chunk of taxpayers would go out of
the tax net since it is very small here representing only 5.2 percent of the
total population which is 23 percent in India.
"Out
of the total taxpayers of some 1.04 crore, some 30 lakh to 34 lakh taxpayers do
not pay tax," he said adding that if the number reduces further, then the
tax collection would decline more.
Responding
to another question, he said the government is very much sincere in reducing
the backlog of tax related cases as a separate bench has already been formed in
this regard with the High Court as well as the ADR initiative is also paying
off.
About
the service center, he said through availing service from this center, the
taxpayers would not need to go to the tax office to take due services as well
as they can print the TIN certificates.
"It's
really a user-friendly system," he said wondering why the total number of
taxpayers through submitting e-returns did not reach one crore over the last
four years since such service was launched in 2021.
Directing
the concerned revenue board officials to make this e-return popular, Rahman,
also the secretary of the Internal Resources Division (IRD), said that they
would resolve the existing problems and barriers in the way of this service
with support from the EU.
"Make
this e-return popular as it is easy and safe...this is environment friendly by
all means...It also saves time and cost," he told the tax officials.
Rahman
also urged all to submit their returns online in a bid to avail their desired
services with ease and comfort.