Private sector employees evading tax under NBR radar

FT ONLINE

The National Board of Revenue (NBR) has asked all the private organisations to inform them about their employees' income tax information each year, aiming to plug the loopholes of tax evasion and increase the number of income taxpayers along with the amount.

The revenue collecting authority of the government has already inducted a new clause in the Income Tax Ordinance.

In the 108 (A) clause, it said each year in April all the appointing organisations have to submit the income tax information of their employees.

Currently, the organisations are submitting the statements and details of tax collection at source.

The pay-roll tax deducted from the salaries and wages of the employees will have be stated in details as per the new clause and be submitted once a year.

As per the NBR statistics, three percent of income tax, which is known as direct tax, comes from this pay-roll tax. The appointing authority of an organisation deducts the tax at source every month from the salaries and wages of its employees. Later, this collected money is deposited to the NBR.

An NBR senior official said this move will help the revenue collecting authority to find out more taxpayers in the coming days in addition to detecting tax evasion by any organisation. "This move, called internal survey, will be able to detect any kind of evasion and bring more taxpayers under the tax net," he said.

Currently, the number of eTIN holders in the country is more than 35 lakh and the government wants to take the number to 1 crore in the next five years as Finance Minister AMA Muhith said in his budget speech.

NBR member (Tax Survey and Inspection) Dr Mahbubur Rahman recently sent a letter to its field offices in this connection and asked them to act accordingly.

Meanwhile, the NBR has brought 538,911 new taxpayers under the tax net in the first 10 months of the outgoing fiscal year against the target of 526,000.

Now the tax-GDP ratio of the country is just over 10 percent against over 15 percent in neighbouring countries.