"We're constantly making automation to simplify the tax payment process while the Income Tax Act-2023 has also been enacted. The new law has been presented in a simple manner to make the tax related services easy," said Chairman of the National Board of Revenue (NBR) Abu Hena Md Rahmatul Muneem on Wednesday.
The NBR Chairman said this while presiding over a function marking the distribution of tax award and tax honour award to the best taxpayers for the FY23 held at the Bangabandhu International Conference Center (BICC) in thecapital.
Some 141 individuals and organizations were awarded National Tax Cards or Tax Cards in the event and honour awards for being the best taxpayers in the Fiscal Year 2022-23. Among them 76 were individuals, 54 were companies and 11 in other categories.
Alongside the NBR Chairman, Finance Secretary Dr. Md. Khairuzzaman Mozumder handed over the tax cards and tax honour award to the best tax payer individuals and representatives of the companies and organizations.
He said the government has already approved the proposal given by NBR to expand the income tax department.
Finance Secretary Dr. Md. Khairuzzaman Mazumder said that the NBR has been doing some good work to increase the internal revenue.
For example, he cited that the new VAT Act was introduced in 2019. In addition to the implementation of the new Income Tax Act, he said the Customs Act was also passed in the Jatiya Sangsad this year.
Dr Mozumder also expressed his high optimism that these three major steps would play a special role in revenue collection.
He said that the e-challan system has ensured instant revenue collection alongside eliminating the weakness of record keeping after revenue collection.
Listing some of the steps taken by the government to expand revenue mobilization, he said, "We want to achieve 10 million taxpayers by 2026 while we've also a target to implement the medium and long-term revenue strategy by
June 2024. Besides, we've goal to raise the revenue income to 0.5 percent of GDP in this year, to 0.5 percent in the next year and 0.7 percent of GDP in the following year."
The Finance Secretary also said, "I'm fully optimistic that we'll be able to achieve these goals in the way we're currently collecting revenue. I think income tax will be an important tool for revenue generation the way we're
progressing ahead."
He said that the nation has already achieved two milestones of successes in the economy -- one of them is graduating from the lower middle income country status in 2015 and another is graduating to a developing country in 2026.
