Tasked with pooling higher funds for financing steadily increasing national budget, the revenue authority now moves to automate the corporate tax-return filing for the ease of business taxpayers.
Officials say that effective from fiscal year 2023-24, the 'corporate e-return' system is meant for reducing time and cost of tax-return submission that will bring in more potential taxpayers.
The income tax wing of the National Board of Revenue (NBR) formed a study team Wednesday to do the spadework for introducing the 'corporate e-return'.
It will be put to practice after framing design of the system, business process and possible steps to launch the system.
A senior tax official says the system will be integrated with the Document Verification System (DVS) on financial report so that taxmen can access it all in a gamut.
The NBR formed the nine-member study team comprising senior income-tax officials to recommend modalities of corporate e-return.
Currently, some 30,000 corporate taxpayers submit tax returns to the tax offices out of 167,000 holders of corporate Taxpayer Identification Number.
The tax official says the study team will start consultation with the corporate taxpayers on e-return for them.
Currently, corporate taxpayers need to submit 26 types of documents manually to the tax department.
Submission of corporate tax return involves both cost and time, which is a major reason Bangladesh lagging behind on paying-tax indicator in global rankings.
The income tax official says software will be developed by tax officials for companies like e-return software for individual taxpayers.
"Following impressive response from the individual taxpayers on e-return, the NBR moved ahead for corporate tax-return automation," the official says.
In the current FY, the NBR introduced online tax-return- submission system for individual taxpayers.
Tax officials say gradually both individual and corporate tax returns would be paperless to reduce hassles facing the taxpayers.
"Our target is to minimize physical visit of taxpayers to the tax offices through automation," he adds.
Time for corporate tax return for this year expires on June 15, 2022 as the NBR extended the timeframe to facilitate taxpayers to submit DVS-verified audited financial statements.
