The NBR plans to fully automate the tax collection system by making use of electronic cash register mandatory for businesses in a year, its chief said yesterday.

“I have already sent the specification of the automation system to the ICT minister for his observation,” said Md Mosharraf Hossain Bhuiyan, chairman of the National Board of Revenue (NBR).

He spoke at the monthly luncheon meeting of the American Chamber of Commerce in Bangladesh (AmCham) at the Pan Pacific Sonargaon in Dhaka.

The vendors will have to purchase the machines on their own as it would be difficult for the tax administrator to take the load, Bhuiyan said.

He said the NBR's automation system will be linked with the ECRs to forestall tax-dodging.

People are not interested in the new system and are keen to make transactions in cash and through cheques, he said.

The automation of the tax collection is needed, as many persons and businesses with taxable incomes are still there to be brought under the tax net, he said. The NBR chief said he would formulate stringent rules to make ECR mandatory.

The use of the cash register was made mandatory in 2007 and 2008, but there was laxity, he said.

Moreover, the machines bought earlier are no longer usable, he said.

Bhuiyan also criticised the spending of a huge amount of money during elections, even at the union council level. For example, he said, a union council chairman candidate has recently spent Tk 3 crore for winning the elections.

Bhuiyan said he would bring such people under the tax net.

Bangladesh's tax-to-gross domestic product ratio—at 8 percent to 9 percent—is one of the lowest in the world, he said.

“We have to raise the tax-to-GDP ratio to attain higher economic growth.”

In the next fiscal year, an additional Tk 70,000 crore would be needed to implement the budget, he said. The NBR chief called for raising the contribution of the industrial sector to 35 percent from the current 29 percent.

Nurul Islam, president of AmCham, also spoke.