The government has taken up a plan to modernise the National Board of Revenue outlining its operational modalities for the next five years.
'There'll be an outline in the next budget with a holistic and integrated approach to modernise NBR,' said the National Board of Revenue chairman, Nasir Uddin Ahmed, on Friday.
He was speaking at the installation ceremony of the new executive committee of BCS (Customs and VAT) Association at a city hotel.
'What NBR wants to achieve in the next five years will be described in the outline,' Ahmed said.
'All the areas, including policy decisions, human resource development and simplification of administration will be included in the outline,' he said adding, 'Development partners also expressed their interest in the project.'
The finance minister, AMA Muhith, said the government would keep 'transaction records' from the next fiscal year.
'Transaction records will be the essential part of the reform programme as the tax office is facing a problem in collecting VAT,' he said.
The minister said awareness building was a major problem in introducing new VAT laws.
'We want to pass VAT laws this year but full application of the laws will become from next year or later,' he said.
Muhith said the government had a plan to spend more on social safety net programme in the coming days.
The commerce minister, Faruk Khan, said tax officials were important 'but it's also true that people do not like them'.
'On one hand, they are collecting tax which helps the country grow but on the other they harass people during the tax collection,' he said.
New president of the Customs Association Mohammad Feroz Shah Alam said initiatives had been taken to modernise VAT system and tax management to increase tax-GDP ratio.
New secretary general of the association Shahidul Islam said the government paid about Tk 3 billion in foreign currency to PSI companies but it could be done by the NBR.
Source: New Age
No comments:
Post a Comment