National Board of Revenue (NBR) has lost Tk 30,000 crore in tax revenue in a decade due to tax dodging by corporations and individuals by concealing real income and showing business losses.
The NBR has audited the income tax returns filed in the last decade and detected irregularities galore in more than two lakh income tax files and evasion of about Tk 30,000 crore of tax.
However, huge amount of tax evasion have been unearthed but the recovery is much too little.
Only 27 percent of the tax evasion detected through audits in the last decade has been recovered while the remaining 73 percent remained unpaid.
According to NBR sources, tax payers are reluctant to accept the alleged tax evasion and detection of irregularities through audit.
They went to conventional courts including appeal courts and tribunals, but the cases are still not disposed of. That is why, the tax money recovery is not yet possible.
An official of NBR said as a result, the accumulated tax will increase further.
However, taxpayers are mainly of two categories including individual and company taxpayers.
Most of the taxpayers are individual tax payers. Although the number of company taxpayers is small, more tax is collected from them. Taxpayers of both the categories are required to file annual returns on time.
After submission of income tax returns, NBR checks those in two ways. One is the primary selection and it is checked if the procedures are correct or not. Another is audit.
According to NBR sources, 2 to 2.5 per cent of the returns submitted every year are audited.
As per rules, no audit is done if the income is 20 percent higher than the previous year. However, if there is any questionable income and no documentary evidence is shown, it is brought under audit.
Former NBR member Alamgir Hossain said, “The number of individual taxpayers in our country is high. As a result, the audit is more in this case. Generally payroll or salaried taxpayers are audited more”.
In the current tax year (2022-23), 28.51 lakh people have filed annual income tax returns.
Out of this maximum two to two and a half percent will come under audit.
According to the report prepared by Audit, Intelligence and Investigation of NBR, 220,000 returns were selected for audit in a total of 10 years from the fiscal year 2010-11 to the fiscal 2019-20.
Out of this, about 2.17 lakh returns were audited and tax evasion of Tk 30,000 crore was unearthed. Only Tk 9,000 crore have been recovered till October 2022.