Staff Reporter :
National Board of Revenue (NBR) is set to continue surprise visit to service-oriented organisations and shopping malls to intensify its hunt for VAT evaders, official sources said.
Prompted by revenue shortfalls by early count and following grand success of such drives at the end of last year (2015), the tax collection authority has taken the move to achieve the government’s tall revenue target for the current fiscal year (2015-16).
“We have decided to continue our move to bring the dodgers under justice and to find out new fields under revenue obligations,” a high official of NBR told The New Nation on Tuesday preferring anonymity.
“We believe the drive would help us to achieve our collection target in the current fiscal,” he said.
Field-level officials of Customs, Excise and Value Added Tax (VAT) Comissionerate, Dhaka South, one of the largest tax zones, had made their sudden appearance in 20 organisations between September 1 and October 26 in 2015 when Tk 179 million worth of VAT evasions were detected.
The official said tax-evasion cases were filed against the companies during the initial drives and succeeded to collect a substantial amount of revenue from the dodgers.
A team of the commissionerate, during the drive, inspected different shopping malls, supermarkets, sweetmeat shops, cinema halls, Chinese restaurants and coaching centres as a part of the drives.
During and after the move, the taxmen also held several motivational and opinion-exchange meetings with Bangladesh Shop Owners Association, Mohanagar Shop Owners’ Association, Bangladesh Jewelry Samity and Nawabpur Electric Market Samity.
Meanwhile, apart from preventive move and bringing tax dodgers under justice, the field-level VAT officials also conducted a survey and issued mandatory VAT-registration numbers to some 2,000 businesses.
Officials said Banshudhara Shopping Mall, Rapa Plaza, Bangla Motor Electric Market and New Market are now under monitoring by the VAT team.
An air-conditioned ladies’ tailor at the New Market was also under surveillance during the drive.
At Nawabpur Electric Market, the VAT team found some 700 unregistered businesses,” said a senior official of the zone.
The VAT officials identified four top potential areas for collecting revenue and meeting their tall target of tax-revenue collection.
Another high official of NBR preferring anonymity said the office is trying to find out new sectors under VAT collection along with committing surprise visits.
“VAT from trade-licence issuance, import-registration certificate, land registration and express mail service of the GPO remained unexplored. Officials eye a substantial amount of revenue from those sectors,” he added.
He also told this reporter that the NRB team is working hard to realise the set target for the current fiscal. “We are hopeful about achieving the revenue collection target.”
However, many of the commissionerates are still far below of revenue collection than the target set for the running fiscal.
According to sources, the target of VAT collection earmarked for a commissionerate in Dhaka is Tk 69.20 billion for the current fiscal.
Of the target, the wing collected around Tk 25 billion in the second quarter showing around 16 per cent growth in collection comparing with the corresponding period of last fiscal and around 40 per cent shortage over the target.
Meanwhile, the NBR official pointed out shortage of manpower in the commissionerate as a major obstacle as almost half the requisite staff positions remained vacant at the wing.
