NBR identifies 138K tax dodgers

As part of an effort to widen the tax net, National Board of Revenue has identified 138,000 house and shop owners who allegedly evaded tax on income generated from rents.

“Till September 5, we’ve identified the house and shop owners who were supposed to pay the tax. They did not pay it or do not have any TIN certificate even,” NBR Chairman Ghulam Hossain told a meeting with Journalists yesterday. Around 73,000 of them are the house owners and others are shop owners.

“We have already served notices to the house owners asking them to take TIN and pay the outstanding taxes while the process of serving notices to the owners of business establishments is under process,” he said.

“Among the people, 60% are from Dhaka, 20% from Chittagong and the remaining from other districts,” Ghulam said. “The survey on finding the tax dodgers is ongoing.”

The revenue body is expecting to get revenue worth Tk10bn from the dodgers, officials said. From July 1, it formally started serving letters to the tax dodgers to pay the taxes.

“This is a continuous process. Our zonal offices started serving notices to the house owners several months ago,” an official from the income tax wing said.

NBR had started conducting a door-to-door survey from December last to prepare a primary list. The survey identified around 100,000 tax-evading house owners, particularly from the metropolitan cities.

To compile the list, the revenue body has taken information from government organisations including City Corporations, Real Estate and Housing Association of Bangladesh and Dhaka Electric Supply Company Limited.

“The main purpose of the initiative is to bring the house owners under tax net and ensure revenue collection. We are serving letters asking them to have TIN files. If they do not pay heed to our notices, we will take actions to bring them under the net,” the official said.

For the fiscal year 2013-14, the total revenue earnings target has been set at Tk1.67tn, including Tk1.36tn of NBR revenue, which is 11.4% of GDP.

To achieve the target, NBR is taking different steps including door-to-door survey to detect people who have been evading taxes for long.

Currently, the revenue body does not have any list of house owners having tax-related information.