The National Bard of Revenue (NBR) has joined its hand with the Bangladesh Road Transport Authority (BTRA) to scrutinize information of vehicle owners to check tax evasion.
The step has also been taken to thwart the use of fake TIN for car registration and fitness renewal, and ensure proper payment of the advance income tax, or AIT, on the basis of vehicle types. In a recent virtual meeting organized by the NBR, both NBR and BRTA took the decision and formed a technical committee to expedite the move. Representatives from the commercial banks also attended the meeting, presided over by its chairman Abu Hena Md Rahmatul Muneem.
Officials said the seven-member technical committee, comprising officials from the NBR, BRTA and banks, will find out ways of receiving car owners' data, including actual transaction value of cars to check tax evasion. It has been alleged that some private car owners hide income and investment on purchase of car in their respective income tax returns to evade tax.
Many are using fake TIN for registration of car and fitness renewal, but BRTA officials in the meeting said they were facing difficulties in verifying the TIN from NBR website, officials said.
In the meeting, it has been decided that the NBR will provide user ID and password to the BRTA so that the authorities can get access to the NBR's online TIN registration server to check the authenticity of TIN. A senior tax official said the Central Survey Zone of the NBR earlier detected a number of cases where the car owners concealed information about having multiple luxury cars.
However, the zone, which is authorized to supervise the advance income tax for car, faced problems in getting car owners' data and transaction price to crosscheck those with the income tax returns of the car owners, he said. It has been alleged that in many cases taxpayers conceal information of having multiple cars to avoid payment of additional tax. According to the Income Tax Ordinance 1984, taxpayers having more than one car are required to pay 50 per cent higher AIT for the second car. Field-level tax officials have also found some car owners showed lower engine capacity of their luxury car in the tax returns to avoid higher tax. Tax officials said such data is required to scrutinize for detecting tax evasion by the well-off section of the people.
In the budget for the current fiscal year (FY2020-21), the NBR increased advance income tax of different ceilings for the car owners. The taxpayers with 1500 CC car have to pay Tk 25,000 a year instead of earlier Tk 15,000.
