The New Nation - Internet Edition

Talha Bin Habib

The National Board of Revenue (NBR) has set a new target of collecting Tk 54,274 crore revenue for the fiscal 2008-09.

The new target for the NBR came after evaluating its excellent performance of collecting taxes and revenue during the current fiscal year.

The said revenue would be collected through widening the tax and VAT nets rather than increasing the rates. The procedure for collecting and submitting tax and VAT is to be simplified from the next fiscal year.

The new target of revenue would mitigate the growing expenditure of the Government. The NBR provides 75 per cent income of the government from internal resources.

From the next fiscal year some new sectors would be under the jurisdiction of VAT and tax.

FBCCI and other trade bodies demanded the continuation of tax holiday. Accordingly the NBR has decided to continue sector wise tax holidays, which were supposed to be expired on June 30 of the current fiscal. The tax holidays would be conditional. The Small and Medium Entrepreneurs (SME) sectors would get first priority for the next budget. And the rate of VAT in the SME sector would also be reduced.

The Better Business Forum (BBF) has called upon the Government to give a chance for whitening the undisclosed money with penalty.

Initiatives are underway to use the whitened money in the main stream of the national economy.

The present tariff structure is 10 per cent for industrial raw materials, 15 per cent for intermediary goods and 25 for finished goods. However, it was not known if the structure would remain the same in the upcoming budget.

NBR Chairman Abdul Majid recently said a combined revenue budget would be presented for the next fiscal year preserving all concerned party interests.

He said the next revenue budget has also a target to reduce the import dependency of the country.

The Caretaker Government has taken stiff measures to nab the tax dodgers, which increased the number of tax payees and brought back dynamism in collection of taxes and revenue by NBR.

For the first ten months (July-April) of the current fiscal the NBR has collected Tk 35,313 crore. The growth rate was 23.21 per cent. The NBR had re-fixed its revenue collection from Tk 43,850 crore to Tk 45,970 crore for the current FY 07-08.

The previous governments have failed to reach the revenue collection targets due to poor performance and lack of coordination. But this is for the first time the revenue collection target had been revised by the Government due to fulfilment of desired level of collecting revenue by the NBR.