The government is planning to engage at least 10,000 unemployed youths in the process of revenue collection aiming to meet the estimated target of revenue earning for the next fiscal. Exchanging views with Economic reporters on Wednesday, Finance Minister AHM Mustafa Kamal observed that presently the revenue generation is much less comparing to the size of our economy.
"In any country especially in our neighbouring countries the national revenue income is at least 18 to 19 percent comparing to the size of economy but in our country it is below 10 percent. Our revenue income is Tk 3,25,000 crore so it is easy to understand that we are failing to collect another amount of Tk 3,25,000 crore. If we fail to ensure collecting revenue of Tk. 6,50,000 crore then it would lack coordination with the economic dynamism of the country," Kamal added.
He said this is very unfortunate that a handful of people of our country always pay tax, some 21 or 22 lakhs of people who always try to pay tax, some of them pay more and some pay less but the rest of the people pay not at all, although they have capacity to pay.
A delegation of Economic Reporters Forum (ERF) led by its President, Saif Islam Dilal met Finance Minister at a discussion meeting hosted by the minister before Iftar at the NEC auditorium in Agaragaon in the city on Wednesday evening. The minister mentioned that this year what they have done from the philosophical perspective is that they will not impose any more burden of tax upon those who are already paying willingly, but they have widened the tax net to involve more and more number of people.
He said, “Not by creating pressure on those who are already regular tax payers but we will increase revenue earning by creating new tax payers. This year we pledge to increase at least 10,000 manpower picked from our youths or students who are not getting job, and we will take our tax offices upto the Upazila level so that a momentum of paying tax can be created across the country", Minister pointed out.
Referring to a recent survey, he said, “We have more than 9 lakh of bazaars across our country from where we have opportunity to collect revenue. Firstly we will inspire them to pay VAT through which we will try to provide them idea about Tax. They will be accustomed gradually to pay VAT and Tax, so taxpaying tendencies will be gradually built not by creating pressure upon them but by making them habituated.
New VAT Law is going to be implemented from 1st of July this year, you know that the new VAT Act is not possible to implement overnight. Side by side increasing manpower if we can stop distortion or corruption in the process of collecting revenue then automatically the collection will be almost doubled. Practice of export and import through mis-declaration is going on, so we have to stop them very strictly, we must ensure inward or outward movement of products or commodities through scanner machine so that no dodging may take place.
Money laundering and terrorism financing take place through over invoicing and under invoicing, so if we can stop over and under invoicing practicing then automatically money laundering and terror financing will come down. In this connection media has a role to play. You have made the people understand that paying tax is not troublesome, it’s an ethical responsibility of a citizen, one to pay tax for the country or nation. Paying tax is a part of patriotism.
New VAT Act is a very simple and formulated in a very transparent way. This year tax has not been increased upon anyone rather it has been reduced to some extent.