Over 54 lakh TIN holders yet to file returns

Al Amin :
Over 54 lakh Tax Identification Number (TIN) holders have not filed their returns within the deadline, despite various steps taken by the NBR throughout year.
The deadline for submitting individual taxpayers was ended on Sunday after extending the time twice.
But, only 28.51 lakh out of around 82 lakh TIN holders submitted their returns during the deadline while around 2.5 lakh sought more times to submit, according to the latest data of the National Board of Revenue (NBR).
The government exchequer earned Tk 4100 crore from the returns. The growth rate of return submission is 23. 98 per cent compared to the same period of last year, while growth in tax collection 24.96 per cent, the data showed.
Around 22.99 lakh taxpayers filed their returns and the revenue board earned Tk 3,281 crore in the same period of the last year.
Md Zahid Hasan, Member (Tax) of the NBR, told The New Nation, “We have taken various measures to increase the return submission. The steps including return submission have become compulsory to get 38 types of government services and online return filing has been introduced.”
“Following the initiatives, the number of returns and income increased slightly this year. Hopefully, it will reach a logical level at the end of the year as several segments including corporate taxpayers are yet to be filed their returns,” he added.
Experts, however, said lack of enforcement, manpower shortage and fear of harassment due to the procedural complication are the major reasons behind the poor return submission rate.
The revenue board should increase services to the taxpayers to enhance the tax net, they said.
They further said that the country’s economy has widened significantly in last decades but the NBR’s capacity development, manpower and logistic support have not been increased accordingly.
Dr Zahid Hussain, former lead economist of World Bank Dhaka office, said, “NBR imposed pressure on the honest taxpayers, while dishonest people get facilities from the revenue board. Such dual policy and fear of harassment are discouraging the people to include in the tax net.”
“NBR has taken various projects in the name of automation in last two decades but yet to be completed properly, which is very shameful for us,” he added.
Besides, the country has many inactive TIN numbers but the NBR has failed to exclude them from its database.
Both taxpayers and taxmen now feel the necessity of incorporating a provision into the income-tax law or rules to exclude an inactive TIN after a certain period of time.
Whishing anonymity, a deputy commissioner of taxes in a tax circle of the city said that he has to handle 12,000 tax returns every year alone, taking huge workload amid acute manpower shortage in the tax-circle office.
“I have found around 30 per cent of the tax returns submitted with nil income that marginal-income group of people submit every year. Workload of handling those returns drives away attention from large tax-evader groups,” he said.