Badrul Ahsan :
The National Board of Revenue (NBR) is set to conduct drives to bring more small businesses under tax and VAT net with a view to boosting collection, official sources said.
To this effect, the NBR has planned to run the survey jointly with the officials from Value-added tax (VAT) and income tax wings to trace eligible traders who still remained out of tax and VAT net.
Field level VAT and tax offices are now preparing a work plan that includes the name of business entities, their locations and date of starting the business, they said, adding the field offices are also running motivation campaigns so that traders pay VAT and tax voluntarily.
The officials also informed that the NBR has recently instructed the field offices for preparing the work plan for the joint survey and intensifying efforts to widen tax and VAT base in the country through this programme.
“Officials of the VAT and tax wing of NBR will jointly visit the business premises including shops, markets and shopping malls to check whether the owners have business identification number (BIN), also known as VAT identification number, and electronic taxpayers’ identification numbers in line with their annual sales record and income, and pay applicable VAT and income tax,” a high official of NBR told The New Nation on Friday preferring anonymity.
According to the existing VAT law, businesses having annual transactions above Tk 70 lakh require to obtain BIN while businesses having transactions below the amount need to be enrolled for paying either turnover tax or package VAT based on their annual transactions.
On the other hand, people having taxable income which is now Tk 2.5 lakh require obtaining e-TINs and paying income tax. Currently, there are around 26 lakh e-TIN holders in the country. Of them, only around 12 lakh individuals filed income tax returns in the current fiscal year. On the other hand, some 7.84 lakh businesses have BINs. Of them, only 57,560 submit VAT returns.
Officials said that a large number of traders still remained out of the tax and VAT net despite having adequate income and business transactions.
The survey teams will scrutinise the sales record and income of businesses to determine the applicability of tax and VAT on them, they said.
They will also match the data of e-TIN and BIN holders to see whether traders were evading taxes through concealment of transactions and income. They will also provide BINs and e-TINs to traders if found them eligible. Some field offices had already launched the survey while others were taking preparations.
Customs, excise and VAT commissionarate, Dhaka (west) selected three markets and a supermall located in Manikganj, Tangail, Jamalpur and Dhaka for conducting the survey.
Dhaka (south) commissionerate is also planning to launch the inspection, the officials said.
