Dhaka: The National Board of Revenue (NBR) has chalked out a new plan taking into consideration the prolonged turmoil in the country for achieving its gigantic revenue collection target for the current fiscal.

NBR chairman Mohammad Nojibur Rahman recently had meetings with its three wings -- Income Tax, VAT and Customs -- to find out the way for facing the challenges of the revenue collection amid the current situation.

The budget for the current fiscal set an overall revenue collection target of Tk 1,82,954 crore. Of the target, the share of National Board of Revenue (NBR) is estimated at Tk 1,49,720 crore, an increase of Tk 24,720 crore over the last fiscal.

Meanwhile, the NBR has managed to collect Tk 69,465 crore in the first seven months (July-January) of the current fiscal (2014-15) while the target was Tk 71,825. But the revenue collection increased 16.79 percent compared to the same period of the last fiscal (2013-14). The revenue collection of the first seven months in the last fiscal was Tk 59,478 crore.

A senior NBR official said that the meeting has decided to expand the tax net, expedite the collection of outstanding revenues, quick disposal of the revenue related cases and plug the loopholes in the tax collection.

The meeting also decided to increase surveillance on the taxpayers and expedite the Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) for enhancing the revenue collection.

According to the NBR officials, some Tk 20,000 crore has been stuck up due to the cases pending in different courts of the country.

 The NBR also decided for surveillance on the advance income tax (AIT), bring effectiveness in the large taxpayers' unit (LTU) and selection of the potential tax files for audit.

It has also decided to take steps to expedite the activities of the Customs and VAT intelligence.  

‘The field offices of the NBR have been asked to follow these instructions,’ a senior NBR official told UNB.  

The NBR chairman in a press conference recently said that it was possible to collect the targeted revenue. ‘We’ve given some instructions to the field offices. We’ve some challenges, but those will be overcome,’ he had said at the press conference.

The NBR has instructed its three wings -- Income Tax, VAT and Customs -- to work in a coordinated way to ensure more revenue collection.

Meanwhile, as a part of its efforts to plug the loopholes in revenue collection, the NBR has detected major flaws in the collection of tax at source by the government entities.

NBR Chairman Md Nojibur Rahman, also Internal Resources Division (IRD), Secretary sent a DO letter to all Secretaries of the government. In the letter, he sought their cooperation in the matters of timely and orderly collection of taxes by respective entities and deposit of the same with public exchequer.

The NBR has found that some entities are not deducting taxes from the taxpayers while others are collecting taxes at lower rates; some of the government entities not depositing the deducted taxes with the public exchequer while some others are not maintaining the deadline with regards to the deposit of the deducted tax to the public exchequer.