The National Board of Revenue (NBR) plans to gear up its effort from next month to generate an increased amount of revenue from the legalisation of untaxed money as taxpayers have whitened an enormous amount of undisclosed money in the July-December period of the current fiscal year 2020-21.
"We would start working soon to use the money whitening tool to boost earnings for the state coffer as it needs the sum to repair the Covid-19-wrecked economy," said a NBR official.
As part of its plan, the revenue authorities would carry out motivation programmes to encourage people to inject their untaxed money into the mainstream economy.
The NBR officials said they would particularly highlight the opportunities introduced in the current budget that no questions would be raised about the sources of the money disclosed.
According to the NBR, a total of 205 taxpayers have seized the opportunity of disclosing their untaxed amount investing in shares, mutual funds, bonds in the capital market paying tax at 10 percent.
Such facility has been given on condition of investing the amount in the capital market for at least one year. The NBR collected a total of Taka 22.84 crore as revenue from those taxpayers who have disclosed their undisclosed amount through investing in the share market.
On the other hand, a total of 7,445 taxpayers have availed of the opportunity of whitening their undisclosed amount through investing in land, flat and thus paid Taka 916.92 crore as tax to the national exchequer.s
According to the NBR, around Taka 10,220 crore has already been injected to the mainstream of economy as a total of 7,650 taxpayers have shown their undisclosed assets in their returns for the tax year 2020-2021 by paying Taka 939.76 crore to the public exchequer as tax.
"It is a record amount . . . such a huge amount was not legalized in any previous financial year. We hope that the rate of such amount would go up at the end of the current fiscal year 2020-21," said member of National Board of Revenue (Tax Admin and Human Resource Management) Hafiz Ahmed Murshed.
Finance Minister AHM Mostafa Kamal in his budget speech placed two new provisions under the Income Tax Ordinance-1984 allowing individuals to legalise their undisclosed money by investing it in the capital market and other government securities, and to legalise any type of untaxed properties, cash, bank deposits, financial schemes and instruments and savings certificates by paying taxes.
He said such decision has been taken in a bid to keep the economic activities in the private sector dynamic, boost the flow of investment and develop capital market despite the COVID-19 pandemic. Undisclosed and untaxed money and asset holders will have to invest such money or make a declaration about the untaxed assets between July 1, 2020 and June 30, 2021 to avail of the opportunity, he added.
Earlier, the government offered such opportunity 17 times and about Tk 14,000 crore was disclosed.
The highest amount of undisclosed income was legalized in 2007 and 2008 during the caretaker government of 1/11.
At that time, 32,558 individuals and organizations took the opportunity and a total of Tk 9,683 crore was disclosed.
