The government has taken an initiative to bring infrastructural reforms in the Internal Resources Division (IRD) and create new units at the National Board of Revenue (NBR) to boost revenue collection.
According to the IRD of the Finance Ministry, through the reforms in its special functional unit and creating new units under the NBR Income Tax Wing, it will be possible for the government’s revenue collecting body to boost revenue generation by 20 per cent.
A summary of the proposals has been sent to Finance Minister ABA Muhith and he has given an affirmative response to those, Finance Ministry sources said.
They said IRD Senior Secretary and NBR Chairman Md Mosharraf Hossain Bhuiyan recently placed the proposals before the finance minister when he underscored the need for further scrutiny of the proposals.
This reform measures include expansion of field level offices (tax offices, range and circle), tax appellate unit, and necessary infrastructural reforms of the tax wing.
Beside, the proposal includes the transformation of Tax Survey Unit into Tax Information Unit.
It also proposes the infrastructural reforms of the tax survey directorate and BCS (Tax) Academy.
The proposals mention that it needs to reform the structure of the office of the income tax along with modernisation of the tax management.
The number of members in the Income Tax Division will be 10 instead of eight as per the proposed expansion and mode of work.
The summary sent to the Finance Minister says for the sake of modernising the tax management and effective implementation of infrastructural reforms, the matter of deciding grade for the NBR members, director general and other posts, their jurisdiction and status should be taken into consideration.
It mentions that different countries, including neighbouring India, conduct numerous search and seize operations every year along with lodging prosecution cases.
Through this, the dodged taxes can be collected apart from establishing a culture of tax payment in the society.
Although most of the countries have separate administrative unit for conducting investigation and prosecution activities apart from tax intelligence unit, the income tax wing of the country has no separate unit.
The proposals mention that it is necessary to have a separate active unit for effectively conducting e-registration, e-return filing, e-payment and other e-tax activities.
Although Bangladesh has introduced e-TIN registration, e-filing and e-payment activities, there is no functional unit so far formed to conduct these activities as well as management. As a result, the e-tax activities cannot be conducted properly, according to UNB news agency.
In the summary, it was mentioned that if the proposal can be implemented, the number of enlisted taxpayers will be 10 million by 2022-23 fiscal year.
Besides, the tax-GDP ratio will be 16 per cent from the existing single digit in the mid term while 20 per cent in the long term.
Side by side, it will be possible to maintain the 20 per cent or more growth in the coming days.
