A NATIONAL daily reported on Saturday that the NBR has asked field officers to send data on foreign employees and their employers in the country to help estimate the amount of tax evasion from this source. The steps is highly commendable at a time when roughly over a million foreign nationals are working in the country but the NBR is not in a position to know of their exact number and how many of them is paying tax and whether or not their employers are employing them with proper work permits. The information is very important as the report said for identifying potential tax sources, tax evasion areas and to shed light on how to bring them under regular tax net.
The presence of foreign nationals in Bangladesh mainly from neighbouring India, Pakistan, China and Sri Lanka is already known; and the NBR move to know their identity and place of work is in our view a right step. As reported these foreign nationals are working in the country’s manufacturing, readymade garment, textiles, buying houses, IT firms, construction industry and multinational companies. They are mainly filling up shortage of skilled manpower and managerial position in strategic sectors but the number of unskilled workers is also enormously high. It is not only important to know of their presence, the category of their skills is also important to train our local manpower to fill up those positions in the economy which is expediently expanding every year. The government should also know how much they are earning legally and how much remained unreported when they are remitting several billion dollars to their homes annually.
A news reports quoting figure released by Center for Policy Dialogue in January this year said about half a million Indians are working in Bangladesh. Alone in 2013, they made a remittance of over US$ 3.716 billion to their homes which is a hefty amount in any rate although India is making it a routine political propaganda that huge Bangladeshi nationals are living and working there threatening their expulsion. The huge presence of Indian workforce in Bangladesh along with nationals from other countries amply invalidate the Indian claim making it clear why Bangladeshis would go to India for work when they are coming here for work. We don’t know if any substantive remittance is coming from India to Bangladesh as earning by Bangladeshi workers, but India is already treating Bangladesh as its fifth largest source of overseas remittance
It suddenly came to the light that Bangladesh is already a big employer of foreign nationals in the domestic sector when the locals are suffering from high unemployment rates mainly from lack of proper skill.
