e-News® | The NEWS Company…DHAKA, Jan 13, 2016 : The field offices of National Board of Revenue (NBR) have targeted to collect Tk 1 crore Value Added Tax (VAT) each month only from the traders of Jamuna Future Park shopping mall, said officials. Following VAT evasion complaints filed against the shop owners, the NBR teams are visiting the markets, raiding the shops, collecting their sales documents and forcibly bringing them into the book to boost the revenue collection.
The effort came after the NBR found that most of the shop owners did not pay either any VAT or paid a very little amount of VAT. They usually evaded VAT in two ways by not collecting VAT from the service recipients or not depositing it to the government exchequer after collecting it from consumers. VAT is now the government’s second biggest source of revenue earning.
The NBR targets to collect Tk1,76,370 crore revenue, including Tk64,262 crore as VAT, this fiscal year. The NBR had earlier decided to launch a drive in Jamuna Future Park Shopping Market as it was found very potential for revenue earnings, said officials of Customs, Excise and VAT Commissionerate Dhaka (North). The amount of VAT collected from the market was very few, as most of them were not registered with the VAT payment system that has compelled the revenue authorities to conduct the raids, they added.
The country’s largest shopping mall has a total of 301 shops, where the commissionerate concerned could collected VAT from only 31 shops in August last year. After launching the drive, the number rose to 51 shops in September while 83 in October, 101 in November and 120 shops in December. The commissionerate officials have targeted to collect monthly Tk1 crore from the shopping mall through bringing all the shops under VAT net by June this year, they added.
During the drives, the team is motivating the traders to register with Business Identification Number (BIN). If they don’t do so, they are being brought under VAT net through forced registration. The NBR officials are filing cases against the non-compliant traders almost everyday soon after consumers are filing complaints against the non-compliant traders.
Responding to a query, NBR officials said they found it a challenging job as the market is a new one. In addition, the commissionerate has assigned only a single official to conduct the drive in Kuril, Bashundhara and Jamuna Future Park area. Apart from Jamuna Future Park shopping mall, NBR officials are also conducting drives in other major shopping malls in the city to unearth VAT evasion and register the non-compliant traders under tax net. There are over 8 lakh VAT-registered entities including shops and import organisations in the country. Among them, only over 3 lakh of them submit annual VAT returns.
