Staff Reporter :
The Customs Excise and VAT Commissionerate (CEVC), Cumilla has attained outstanding success in the automated system in the last few consecutive months.
Some 97.91 per cent businesses, who have Business Identification Numbers (BINs), under the commissionerates submitted their Value-Added Tax (VAT) returns through online in the last November. The number was 97.55 per cent in October of this year.
The Jeshore VAT Commissionerate has attained the second position as some 91.81 per cent businesses under the commissionerate submitted their VAT returns during the last month.
In terms of online VAT return submission, the success rate of the other commissionerates of the National Board of Revenue (NBR) was 60.86 per cent during the aforesaid time, according to a data of the revenue board.
By the overwhelming online VAT return submission rate, the CEVC’s Commissioner Belal Hossain Chowdhury is obviously the most successful among the commissionerates in the country.
“The reason behind the success is officers of the commissionerate went door to door to persuade taxpayers to file returns online and taught the taxpayers practically how to submit VAT online,” Belal said on Sunday over phone.
We have been able to make taxpayers understand that automation will benefit both the taxpayers and the government, he claimed.
An official of the CEVC said officials held a number of virtual conferences to let taxpayers know how an automated VAT return system ensures transparency of accounts and respite from various kinds of harassment.
Sources said the NBR took an initiative to automate the VAT system, a major source of revenue, back in 2012. Seven years after formulating the Value Added Tax and Supplementary Duty Act-2012, the revenue board launched online VAT registration services in 2019.
At the end of last year, the revenue authority started to collect VAT returns online. However, the field offices could not achieve much success in this regard due to the ongoing pandemic.
An analysis of the NBR’s VAT automation scene reveals that 3,11,927 businesses obtained e-BINs till November this year, after the start of the online registration service and coming out of the manual system. Of them, only 60.86 per cent or 189853 firms submitted their returns through the automated system.
