Better governance in focus for boosting revenue in next budget: NBR Chairman

National Board of Revenue chairman Md Abdur Rahman Khan on Wednesday said that the government's revenue income will be boosted by improving governance in tax compliance and containing evasion—but not by raising taxes.

“Not by increasing the tax rate; this is our thumb rule,” he said while speaking at a pre-budget meeting held at the conference room of the Revenue Building.

He said that the tax burden will not increase during the upcoming national budget for FY25-26. Instead, the NBR is trying to minimise it.

The NBR boss said that it is a challenging task to balance tax collection and facilitate business and trade.

Asking all to maintain tax compliance strictly, he said that the cost of non-compliance is very high.

“You will be in great trouble if you are not maintaining tax compliance properly,” he said.

Regarding the using of counterfeit band-roll by a section of bidi producers, Khan said that fake band-roll worth some Tk 3 billion has recently been recovered in Manikganj.

“Why are you doing this, tax on bidi is comparatively low. It is 56 percent while the rate is 82 percent on cigarette. You will have to pay a big price for revenue evasion,” he warned.

In this connection, the NBR chairman said that there will be no option left to the agerncy except enacting tougher law if the bidi factory owners failed to shun their tax evasion tendency.

“It will be tough for you to continue your business. Please keep it in your mind, if we find one piece of fake band-roll in future we will take stern action. If necessary we will enact new law,” he said.

While his attention was drawn on imposing higher tax on imported materials by the customs officials which was actually imported on lower price, the NBR chief asked the customs officials to be more cautious about it.

“Over invoicing is dangerous than the under invoicing, because through under invoicing you might get lower duties, but by the over invoicing foreign exchange drains out from the country alarmingly, and it helps smuggling out money,” he said.

He also asked the VAT officials to prepare their mindset for collecting VAT in a wider way, not by imposing supplementary duty.

Khan regretted that the state of income tax and VAT is very poor in the country.

“We are not even close to the amount we are supposed to get from income tax and VAT,” he said.

He reiterated that if the business people come to a consensus on a single VAT rate then the NBR is ready to lower the VAT rate.