THE National Board of Revenue (NBR) has formed two regional joint taskforces to prevent tax evasion by foreign nationals working in the country, reports a national daily on Monday. Many foreigners, mostly Indians, Chinese, Sri Lankan along with some European and American nations are working in Bangladesh’s telecom, garment, gas, power and NGO sectors, but the government has no database on them and losing big amount of income tax from them. While the job sector remains stagnant as it has for many years due to the private sector’s sluggishness and more and more fresh graduates crowding the job market, losing the high-salaried jobs to foreigners anger local job aspirants. While a severe unemployment crisis is triggering massive migration of our youths, employing foreigners is in stark contrast to Bangladesh’s national interest. The policymakers cannot remain idle about it.The taskforces for Dhaka and Chittagong regions, would mainly monitor the NBR activities related to tax collection from foreign workers and implementation of legal provision of penalising local employers for giving jobs to foreigners without work permits. As per law, employers have to pay 50 per cent of their total payable income tax or Tk 5 lakh, as fine, for giving jobs to any undocumented foreigner. Apart from the penalties, benefits including tax holiday and other tax exemptions will be made void if any company is found involved in such illegal practices. Despite around 10 lakh foreigners who are working in the country only around 10,000 submitted income tax returns last year, thus many evade taxes. Many legally working foreigners who are supposed to pay income tax at the rate of 30 per cent also evade taxes with the help of their employers. It is disappointing that the NBR has not formed any databank regarding foreign employment till date when the world has become more tensed with security concerns. So, the taskforces are assigned to formulate a databank and are empowered to conduct factory checks, go to offices and even homes collecting data and enforcing laws. This is a welcome move and we would look forward that the taskforces will collect both professional and sensitive data in handling the foreigners — either legal or illegal, to bring discipline in this sector. The taskforces consist of field level income tax offices, central intelligence cell of the NBR and the businesspeople. We hope the taskforces will professionally handle their objectives and setup an electronic databank quickly. Our tax-laws are complex for honestly paying taxes. Corruption is in-built and it is known to all, yet the tax-laws will not be made easy. This will not help if foreigners have to face hassles for corruption in meeting their tax liability, they will go elsewhere.
