The National Board of Revenue (NBR) is set to launch an automated challan system for income taxpayers from mid-August in a bid to check submission of fake challan.
The NBR and Finance Division will jointly implement the system to thwart tax evasion and ensure timely payment of taxes to the public exchequer.
The decision has been taken in a recent meeting of NBR. Finance secretary Abdur Rouf Talukdar was present at the meeting.
The system will be implemented under the SPFMS programme on 'improvement of public financial services delivery through implementation of BACS IBAS++' scheme.
In the meeting, both the tax and finance ministry officials decided to start piloting of the a-challan in tax zone-4 (salary circle) first.
Officials said piloting and system development of a-challan is expected to be completed by August.
By December next, all tax commissionerates in Dhaka will come under a-challan system, they said.
The NBR will train the officials on a-challan by the month of August.
Formal launch of a-challan system is scheduled on August 1, 2020, officials said.
They said taxpayers would be able to prepare their treasury challan online to pay income tax and deposittax money to the bank counter with the printed copy of challan.
Bank will generate automated treasury challan with barcode as receipt copy after receiving tax, they said.
Taxpayers will be able to check whether his or her tax was deposited to the government exchequer reading the barcode.
Officials said there will also have a provision of online payment along with a-challan.
A-challan system will work as payment gateway if the taxpayer has online banking facility, they added.
They also said the NBR chief has a plan to make the a-challan system mandatory for individual taxpayers from the next fiscal year 2021-2022.
Currently, income taxpayers can pay their tax online using NBR-Sonali Bank e-payment system.
Tax officials would be benefited most from the system as field level tax offices would be able to instantly know the tax amount deposited against the office.
Once a-challan introduced, it will reduce the gap in the amount of tax collection between the NBR and the office of the Controller General of Accounts due to difference in the challan management process.
Currently, taxpayers deposit their tax visiting a branch of bank and filling up the treasury challan manually. And taxpayers submit a part of the challan to the tax office.
Then bank forwarded the treasury challan to the Bangladesh Bank and the central bank forwarded the copy of challan to the CGA office for accounting purposes.
Income tax office also follows the same procedure if the taxpayer submits cheque or pay order to the tax office.
It has been found that the process often creates difference in the amount of tax collection between the tax office and CGA.
Tax offices register the tax collection after receiving the challan while the CGA gets the notification few days later. Earlier, the NBR saw a big gap between it and CGA data of tax revenue collection in a financial year that sparked widespread criticism.
doulot_akter@yahoo.com