The British budget has gone the hard way to ensure hard-pressed individuals and businesses to have enough financial support to weather the current economic and public health crisis resulted from Covid 19 pandemic. The Chancellor of Exchequer Sunak has admitted that coronavirus has fundamentally altered the way of life and has made acute damage to the UK economy. It will take Britain and the world ‘a long time to recover from the extraordinary economic situation’. Already 700,000 people have lost their jobs since March 2020 and the economy has shrunk by 10 percent, the largest fall in 300 years.
In Britain the government has ventured a big stimulus package for business investment delivered through tax breaks. The budget announced £280 billion of support to protecting jobs, keeping businesses afloat and helping families get by. The government will not raise the rates of income tax, national insurance or VAT this year. The move to freeze income tax for four years is expected to bring by 2025-26 million more people into the tax system and create one million higher rate taxpayers. The present freeze will enable many to continue, but otherwise they would have been financially finished. Such long-term thinking is not available in Bangladseh. The budget is to suck money from the people by collecting tax and VAT without any consideration for the distressed financial condition of the people. Those who can, even in such a dire condition, are stealing money and laundering it abroad.
Not only Britain but all other rich countries are trying hard for being helpful to the unemployed and others in many ways and provide money to the pockets of everyone because other than the ultra- rich ones everybody needs help. But our government is concentrating on how to extract money from the people creating pressure through the Board of revenue. The unemployed young ones receive no consideration. They are expected to go abroad to work as slaves and earn foreign exchange for making corruption easier.
The revenue collection target for the fiscal 2020-21 has been set at Tk 3,78,000 crore, nearly the same as last year’s target of Tk 3,77.810 crore. Income tax and vat collection targets have been raised contrary to expectations. It is particularly due to this reason that we were expecting to see a minimal increase in the allocation for the social safety net programme which has been set at Tk 95,574 crore – up from Tk 81,865 crore last year. Industry and services, the two most important drivers of economic growth, have yet to overcome the negative impacts of Covid-19 related recession.
We need a government with human feelings for the hard- pressed people.
