The National Board of Revenue (NBR) has asked its Investigation and Intelligence Cell (IIC), formed in each tax zone, to strengthen their vigilance and scrutiny to prevent tax evasion.
"As part of the drive to catch the tax evaders, the NBR has asked the IIC to take effective steps in this regard," a senior official at NBR told UNB.
Recently, the NBR has given the directive to its field level officials as the first half of the current fiscal has already elapsed.
The NBR has asked the officials to audit the big taxpayers' files properly. "They'll send fortnightly reports to the Board on their activities," the NBR official said.
There are 31 tax zones across the country and each tax zone has 22 circle offices which collect taxes directly.
The IIC has been formed in each tax zones with commissioners of the respective tax zones.
The NBR official said the aim of the IIC is to identify the evaders, individuals or organisations. "When this will be ensured, it'll be possible to increase the tax collection and people will get discouraged to evade tax," he said.
He mentioned that the cell will examine the big taxpayers and find out whether there is any suppression of income, what was the declaration of income in the previous year and hold regular meetings with them.
He said the revenue collecting authority is under pressure to achieve the revenue target as there is no indication from the government to reduce their target after suspending the 15 per cent unified VAT system for two years, which was supposed to come into effect this fiscal year.
"The NBR has calculated the revenue target keeping the huge inflow of revenue from the VAT, but now we're not getting that support from the VAT wing as Parliament didn't give us permission to impose the new VAT law," he said.
While placing the report on budget implementation progress of the first quarter (July-Sept) Finance Minister AMA Muhith said the trend of income and expenditure, and macroeconomic analysis in Parliament recently did not give any indication to bring down the revenue target.
The revenue target for the NBR for the current fiscal year (2017-18) was set at Tk 2481.9 billion while that of non-NBR tax revenue collection at Tk 86.62 billion and the target of non-tax revenue collection set at Tk 311.79 billion.
Of the total revenue target of the NBR, Tk 913.44 billion will come from VAT while Tk 868.67 billion from income tax and corporate tax, Tk 301.53 billion from import and export duty and Tk 382.12 billion will be generated from supplementary duty.