It is disconcerting to note that National Board of Revenue (NBR) has lost Tk 30,000 crore in tax revenue in a decade due to tax dodging by corporations and individuals by concealing real income and showing business losses. As reported by this daily on Saturday, the NBR has audited the income tax returns filed in the last decade and detected irregularities galore in more than two lakh income tax files and evasion of about Tk 30,000 crore of tax.
Tax evasion has long been hindering the growth of the country’s revenue collection. More often than not NBR cannot achieve its revenue target due to tax exemption. Still our tax-to-GDP ratio is below 10 percent and Tax exemption is one of the obstacles to the non-growth of GDP ratio. Therefore, the government should gear up efforts to curb tax evasion in order to raise revenue collection further.
The government should take prudent steps to raise revenue collection further. Needless to mention, policymakers can raise revenues by modifying existing tax policy, enacting new taxes, and boosting economic activity.
Policymakers can raise revenues by
modifying existing tax policy, enacting
new taxes, and boosting economic activity
E-commerce sector can be one of the largest tax-collecting areas. But unfortunately, authorities concerned have not been able to establish any infrastructure system to collect revenue from online business sector.
We need to build a highly skilled ICT wing in order to collect revenues from the ICT firms or services. Also, the government should formulate and implement new taxation law for e-commerce which will
more clearly define the parameters of the e-commerce industry.
The revenue board will need a highly skilled ICT wing aiming to collect revenues from the ICT firms or services. In order to collect revenue from the ICT service based business firms NBR has to bring some necessary changes in its existing VAT rules.
NBR has to identify the challenges and barriers in the area. As the revenue authority has no infrastructure in place to collect revenue from this area, they must build necessary infrastructure to collect revenues from e-commerce sector.
