REVENUE collection has missed the target by a big margin in the 2019-20 fiscal year due to sluggish economic activities. The collection was short of Tk 82,000 crore from the revised target in the immediate past fiscal year. The NBR has been failing to achieve its annual tax revenue collection target since 2015, but very little initiatives for levying tax on the higher income group and expanding the tax net have so far been established. For tax collection failure, the government has been depending on internal and external loans that ultimately will be imposed on the tax-payers.
Economists said such a huge shortfall in internal revenue collection will increase the government’s budget deficit in the current FY. Without the expected reform, it will be impossible to achieve the ambitious revenue collection target of Tk 378,000 crore for the current fiscal year. The proposed budget has not given any clear direction as to how the projected revenue target can be materialized. Experts believe that budget deficit might rise to 6.5 per cent for the first time due to the revenue shortfall unless the government cuts its expenditure by a big margin.
There have been several reform initiatives within NBR to have a simplified, transparent, efficient and effective tax administration. Unfortunately, most of those reform initiatives have either been discontinued or remained dysfunctional. The Covid-19 situation calls for introduction and initiation of reforms in the tax regime as overhauling of the tax system is a crying need at this point when the country desperately needs more resources.
To talk about reform in NBR makes no sense now though it is needed. Our problem is the government itself unaccountable, inefficient and corrupt. We have sufficient numbers of honest educated people who know how to remedy against mismanagement in the government but their work cannot be achieved in isolation. We must get our heads right. We are on the precipice of chaos.
The government should ask the big plunderers to return the money they stole. Keeping them in jail has not helped the realisation of illegal money. The consequences have been closure of businesses and joblessness for thousands of people.
Instead of coercing NBR stop protecting plunderers
