Many of the country’s taxpayers often complain that their tax files are targeted on purpose for auditing just to harass them.
However, officials working in the government's taxation department have their views and explanations in this regard.
To put an end to this contention, National Board of Revenue, or NBR now plans to use software to replace current manual way of random tax file selection for audit purpose.
With the introduction of software, NBR aims to remove any harassment that taxpayers face due to the existing manual selection process of tax files.
"Once it's done, the selection of the income tax file of the taxpayers will be done by the software," a senior official of the NBR told UNB.
Referring to allegations made by the taxpayers now, he hoped, "After the installation of the software, this sort of allegations will not be brought against us."
Taxpayers are allowed to submit their income tax returns under the universal self-assessment system where the tax officials have nothing to do except accepting the returns.
But after that if any tax official suspects of any anomalies in the submitted returns, the official can scrutinise the particular file/s and go for examining the same.
Once the tax official is convinced that there is a scope to get extra revenue from a particular taxpayer, he/she can summon the taxpayer concerned and demand for extra revenue after showing the anomalies in the tax return. In case the taxpayer denies paying the amount, it is then placed in the tax tribunal for adjudication.
But there is complaint that often the system to audit the files after three years are not followed by the taxmen. The business leaders for a long time were demanding to bring transparency in the selection of audit files.
"We have taken the move to prepare the software to honour that demand," the NBR official said.
"Audit software is part of an initiative so that the taxpayers will not be harassed," he said.
He also said that this sort of move will boost the taxpayers' confidence on the revenue collection authority of the government. "This will ultimately help us to get more taxes from taxpayers," he said.
Currently the income tax wing is contributing 37 per cent of the total revenue collection of the NBR. "Target has been fixed to enhance the percentage of the collection up to 50 per cent of the total collection by the fiscal 2020-21," the NBR official said.
