NBR seeks income tax information of private sector employees

The National Board of Revenue (NBR) has taken a move to collect income tax information of private sector employees every year.

The revenue collecting authority plans to plug the loopholes of tax evasion and increase the number of income taxpayers along with the amount.

The NBR has already inducted a new clause in the Income Tax Ordinance in this regard, reports UNB.

In the 108 (A) clause, it said each year in April all the appointing organisations have to submit the income tax information of their employees.

Currently, the organisations are submitting the statements and details of tax collection at source.

The pay-roll tax deducted from the salaries and wages of the employees will have be stated in details as per the new clause and be submitted once a year.

As per the NBR statistics, three per cent of income tax, which is known as direct tax, comes from this pay-roll tax.

The appointing authority of an organisation deducts the tax at source every month from the salaries and wages of its employees.

Later, this collected money is deposited to the NBR.

An NBR senior official said this move will help the revenue collecting authority to find out more taxpayers in the coming days in addition to detecting tax evasion by any organisation.

"This move, called internal survey, will be able to detect any kind of evasion and bring more taxpayers under the tax net," he said.

Currently, the number of e-TIN holders in the country is more than 3.5 million and the government wants to take the number to 10 million in the next five years as Finance Minister AMA Muhith said in his budget speech.

NBR member (Tax Survey and Inspection) Dr Mahbubur Rahman recently sent a letter to its field offices in this connection and asked them to act accordingly.

Meanwhile, the NBR has brought 538,911 new taxpayers under the tax net in the first 10 months of the outgoing fiscal year against the target of 526,000.

Now the tax-GDP ratio of the country is just over 10 per cent against over 15 per cent in neighbouring countries.