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The National Board of Revenue (NBR) has asked its field offices to be harsher on the businessmen who try to evade taxes, aiming to improve the revenue collection in the coming days.
The tax-collecting authority also directed the field level officials to help the honest business entities, which pay taxes regularly, reports UNB.
The directives came from NBR chairman M Nojibur Rahman in a recent meeting with the field level officials to map out a work plan of revenue collection at the NBR.
"We have to be harsh on the errant taxpayers, there is no other way to encourage the honest taxpayers," a senior official of the NBR told the news agency.
He said that the NBR always maintains zero tolerance to the tax evaders for boosting revenue collection."This also encourages the honest and regular taxpayers," he added.
He said that the NBR chairman also directed the field level offices to deposit the collected revenue to the national exchequer in time for getting better picture of the revenue collection in the current fiscal year.
The NBR chairman also directed his colleagues to take prompt action after getting any complaint of tax, duty and VAT evasion.
He asked the field level officials to avoid complexities of system for avoiding revenue related cases and lay emphasis on Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) to settle revenue-related conflicts.
"We are in an uncomfortable position this fiscal as we have huge target that was fixed keeping in mind the new unified 15 per cent VAT law. But the law was suspended for two years whereas the target still remains the same," the NBR official said.
He said that the NBR would not get at least Tk 200 billion (20,000 crore) due to the suspension of the VAT law.
Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina on July 13 in Parliament had told that the government has to do something to fill up the huge revenue deficit.
The target for the NBR in the current fiscal has been set at Tk 2.48 trillion while the target of Non-NBR tax revenue collection has been fixed at Tk 86.62 billion. The target of non-tax revenue collection has been set at Tk 311.79 billion.
The NBR has to collect Tk 868.67 billion from income tax and corporate tax, Tk 913.44 billion will come from VAT while Tk 301.53 billion will come from import and export duty and Tk 382.12 billion will be generated from supplementary duty.