The National Board of Revenue has issued a comprehensive strategic plan and around 50 directives to its field offices to achieve its revenue collection target for the current fiscal year, NBR officials said.
The revenue board on Tuesday issued the plan focusing on prevention of evasion of income tax, import duties and value-added tax by unearthing tax-dodging incidences, resolving pending cases through alternative dispute resolution, expanding income tax and VAT net and strengthening tax audit, intelligence and monitoring activities, they said.
Under the plan which was finalised based on the opinions of high officials and all commissioners of the NBR’s three wings — income tax, customs and VAT, the NBR issued 23 directives to income tax field offices, 13 to customs offices and seven to VAT offices.
According to the plan, each of the 31 income tax zones will have to prepare a list of big taxpayers and scrutinise their tax files carefully so that no one can evade tax.
The customs offices have been asked to categorise all taxable business entities in high-risk, medium-risk and low-risk based on risk of revenue loss and conduct audit, inspection and investigation activities in those businesses for ensuring revenue collection.
The NBR directed its customs offices to ensure strict supervision so that no importers could release imported goods clandestinely without paying duties.
Terming the under-invoicing and miss-declaration in import major problems for the customs department, the NBR also directed its field offices to take tough actions against the importers who are involved in under-invoicing and miss-declaration.
Income tax, customs and VAT wings will have to share information with each other to find mismatch in tax payment and income of the organisations which contribute 80 per cent of the total revenue collection of each wing.
Tax files of the top sectoral taxpayers of each office will jointly be scrutinised to determine actual tax of those taxpayers so that no organisations could evade income tax, duty and VAT.
The plan stated that each tax zone must have to unearth at least one big tax evasion case a month in the current fiscal year.
Like in Dhaka and Chittagong, the NBR has planned to bring big and corporate taxpayers in Khulna and Rajshahi under special observation.
According to the plan, the revenue board will also conduct surveys and drives in all important business centres and upazilas to bring potential taxpayers and businesses under the tax net.
It has also emphasised on making the ADR mechanism more effective to resolve tax-
related disputes out of court and collect around Tk 27,000 crore in revenues which have been remained unpaid as cases are pending with different courts.
The NBR has directed the VAT offices to prepare a list of sectors such as
cement, edible oil,
cigarette and steel for ensuring VAT collection from the sectors.
The NBR has also planned an intensive supervision for those business houses that paid VAT in the last fiscal year lower than the previous year.
According to the plan, the NBR will ensure use of electronic cash register in shops for ensuring VAT collection at the retailers’ level.
VAT-payers, who do not file returns or do not submit VAT collected from the consumers to the government exchequer, will be brought under legal action.
The government has set a target of revenue collection at Tk 1,36,000 crore for the FY 2013-2014.
The collection target has been set at Tk 51,000
crore for VAT wing, Tk 48,300 crore for income tax wing and Tk 35,700 crore for customs wing of the NBR.