Don't maintain two sets of books

NBR Chairman Md Mosharraf Hossain Bhuiyan yesterday asked the secretaries of listed companies not to dodge taxes by maintaining two sets of books of account.

“The persons or companies who maintain two registers to record their income will be treated as the corrupt ones as they are perpetrating it to dodge tax,” he told a seminar on “Finance Act 2018-19 vis-a'-vis National Budget 2018-19”.

An ambitious budget taken up by the government has led to a large revenue collection target, he told the event organised by the Institute of Chartered Secretaries of Bangladesh (ICSB) at Dhaka Club in the capital.

The government targets earning Tk 339,200 crore as revenue in 2018-19, of which the National Board of Revenue (NBR) would collect Tk 296,201 crore.

Domestic resource mobilisation is highly important as some mega projects are now being implemented from the government's own funds, Bhuiyan said at the event as the chief guest.

He assured that the NBR would try to amend the relevant act to recognise chartered secretaries as income tax practitioners before preparing the next fiscal year's budget.

Kanon Kumar Roy, a member for tax policy at the NBR, shared his recent experience travelling in Sweden, saying that 80 lakh of the country's total manpower of nearly one crore were taxpayers. “I visited the country two months ago where the newly-born infants become taxpayers. The parents open savings accounts with the banks for their children. The government will take tax from the account automatically,” he said.

The tax department is highly popular in Sweden and Bangladesh should take lessons, Roy said.

Mohammad Asad Ullah, immediate past chairman of the ICSB, said the NBR should reduce the highest individual tax ceiling rate from 30 percent to 25 percent and exempt the surcharge on individuals' assets.

Sadhan Chandra Das, partner of Sadhan Das and Co Chartered Accountant, and Md Azizur Rahman, council member of the ICSB, presented two papers at the seminar. Feroz I Faruque, a World Bank consultant and president of Trans World Resources Inc, also addressed the event.