The National Board of Revenue (NBR) has decided to gear up its drive to motivate house owners to collect rents from their tenants through bank accounts.

The NBR has also decided to hold seminars, meetings and rallies in different parts of the country to remove the house owners' phobia about it.

"We'll launch our drive to create awareness among people", an NBR official told the news agency seeking anonymity.

The government has made it mandatory from July 1 last year to collect house rents if it goes above Tk 25,000 through banks, aiming to bring both the landlords and the tenants under the tax net.

According to the rule, anyone having the ownership of any property used for commercial or residential purposes has to collect the monthly rent, if over Tk 25,000, through a bank account in any scheduled bank. "But the response to the order has so far been very low," said the NBR official.

According to him, the government can collect thousands of crores of taka as tax from over 150,000 building owners in the country's nine city corporations. "That's why the board has also decided to tighten the monitoring system," he said.

According to the rule, the NBR will penalise house owners at the rate of 50 percent of taxes payable on incomes derived from the house property or Tk 5,000, whichever is higher, for not transacting the house rent through banks, according to the Finance Bill 2014.