Taxation rules and processes, including that for income, needs to be revised and automated to make it easy for cottage, micro, small and medium enterprises to run business, Ashraf Ahmed, president of the Dhaka Chamber of Commerce and Industry (DCCI) yesterday. 

In case of businesses with multiple ventures, taxation at multiple levels should be scrapped by allowing profits of one concern to cover for losses of another, he requested the National Board of Revenue (NBR) chairman during a meeting at the latter's head office in Dhaka.

Currently there is a provision for the imposition of a 400 percent fine on the price of the product if businesses provide the incorrect Harmonized System (HS) code, even if there is no error in the product description, a DCCI press release quoted Ahmed as saying.

The HS codes are a standardised numerical method commonly used throughout the import and export process for the classification of goods.

The relevant provision should be amended allowing businesses to correct such errors during the declaration of goods at the assessment stage, he said.

Only 5 percent of Bangladesh's population pay tax whereas it is 23 percent in India, said NBR Chairman Abdur Rahman Khan.

A large section of society remains out of the tax net, for which the pressure for revenue generation continues to be exerted on existing taxpayers, he said.

If this continues, diligent taxpayers will become discouraged, for which the NBR is working to expand the tax net on a priority basis in the next six months, he added.

Moreover, the NBR will work on preventing a single entity from being taxed at multiple stages, for which the effective tax rate for corporates sometimes becomes substantially high, said Khan.

The NBR will also focus on streamlining the taxation process and rationalising the rates while sticking to the revenue collection target, he said.

The NBR chairman called upon the business community to go cashless utilising banking channels when conducting financial transactions to help prevent tax or VAT evasion.

He also urged the DCCI to conduct research, either by itself or jointly with the NBR, to identify problems in the revenue sector and inform the authorities concerned so that those can be resolved fast.