Kazi Zahidul Hasan :
The National Board of Revenue (NBR) has prepared an action plan to meet the ‘ambitious’ revenue collection target set for the fiscal 2015-16, officials said.
They said that the NBR has developed the plan amid widespread concern over the higher revenue target in the upcoming fiscal year, beginning from July 1.
“We have already prepared the draft plan outlining strategies to achieve the next fiscal’s revenue collection target,” a senior NBR official told The New Nation on Tuesday on condition of anonymity.
He added that the draft plan would be placed before the ministerial committee soon for its approval.
According to him, the plan focused on widening tax-net, making reforms to auditing, transfer pricing and VAT system, capacity building of the revenue board by introducing its complete digitisation and making Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) system realistic and strict vigilance on tax evader.
“We need to raise revenue collection growth to 30 per cent on an average in the next fiscal from 17-18 per cent now, and the plan has been formulated keeping this in mind,” he added.
The official further said that the revenue board recently held a meeting with its senior officials where they have been asked to work with the action plan to help meeting the upcoming fiscal’s revenue collection target.
“We have also asked our field officers to take necessary steps against the revenue defaulters and beef up their supervision and monitoring so that more people can be brought under the tax-net,” he said.
The NBR official mentioned that the action plan has laid special emphasis on plugging loopholes in transfer pricing system by the multinational companies as there are allegations that they are avoiding tax taking advantage of such systematic loopholes.
When asked, he said, “We can achieve our target through proper implementation of the action plan as well as initiating strict action against tax evaders, collecting due taxes and resolving tax-related disputes”.
He also said that it is mandatory to increase the revenue collection as falling behind targets could hit certain development projects of the government.
The government in its proposed budget for the fiscal 2015-16 has set over Tk 2.08 lakh crore revenue collection target and of which 84 per cent or Tk 1.76 lakh crore will be collected by the NBR in the form of VAT, income tax, import duty and others.
Terming the revenue collection target ‘highly ambitious’, local think tanks and experts said that it is not attainable considering the dismal growth of the revenue collection in the outgoing fiscal.
They said, the overall revenue collection may fall short by Tk 12,000 crore from the target of next fiscal.
Finance Minister AMA Muhith also admitted that the revenue collection target for next fiscal year is high but the NBR is ready to achieve it.
“Although the target is ambitious, but it is very much achievable,” Muhith said this while addressing the post-budget press conference at the city’s Osmani Memorial Auditorium on June 5.
NBR Chairman Md Nojibur Rahman also said the tax authority has the capacity to collect Tk 200,000 crore in any given year. Since the target for fiscal 2015-16 is lower than that, his team can achieve it.
