NBR likely to get revenue target worth Tk 291,000cr

FT ONLINE

The National Board of Revenue (NBR) is likely to get a gigantic target to collect Tk 291,000 crore in revenue during the coming 2018-19 fiscal year,up 16.84 percent from Tk 248,190 crore of the current fiscal year.

According to sources at the NBR, Finance Minister AMA Muhith has asked the revenue collecting authority to fix sector-wise targets, keeping the grand total at Tk 291,000 crore.

In the outgoing fiscal 2017-18 fiscal year, the NBR got Tk 248, 190 crore as their target but it was brought down to Tk 223,000 crore in the revised budget.

A senior official said that the NBR has started its work as per the directive of the Finance Minister and fixed the targets for income tax, VAT and Customs.

In the coming fiscal year, the Value Added Tax (VAT) will be the highest revenue contributor with a 33 percent jump from the previous year's. The revenue collection target from VAT in 2018-19 fiscal is said to be Tk 110,000 crore.

The revenue target from income tax is Tk 98,000 crore while the target from customs is Tk 83,000 crore, with a 27.27 percent hike.

The NBR official said the trend of revenue collection has been changing. After the independence, the revenue of the country was dependent on customs. But the scenario has changed in the last couple of years as revenue from income tax suppress the customs' collection, according to the official.

"At present, VAT has become the highest revenue contributor," the NBR official said mentioning that VAT is the easiest process for revenue collection. "Each and every person of a society pays VAT, and it's easy to collect. That's why VAT is a popular process in the world for revenue collection."

Meanwhile, the NBR has fulfilled its target to enlist new taxpayers for the 2017-18 fiscal well before the end of the fiscal year. The target was 5.26 lakh new taxpayers, as the revenue collecting authority enlisted 538,891 at the end of April.

The NBR is also planning to include another 100,000 taxpayers under the tax net by the end of this outgoing fiscal.

Currently, the number of eTIN holders in the country is 34.60 lakh, while the tax-GDP ratio is just over 10 percent.

The NBR official said the number of taxpayers in the country is gradually increasing and it will not be a big deal forthe NBR to collect Tk 98,000 crore for the next fiscal.

He mentioned that the NBR has decided to gear up its 'internal survey' apart from external one to enhance the revenue collection.