NBR to adopt new technique to increase revenue

The National Board of Revenue is now going to adopt a new technique based
on 'Business- Customs Partnership' trying to increase revenue collection by
preventing tax-dodging tricks. Under the new methodology the NBR will
utilise the existing businessmen and their trade bodies in unearthing the
revenue-dodgers. 'This system is effective and worked in many places
around the world,' NBR member (Customs and VAT Administration) M Farid Uddin
told the news agency on Monday. He said Business-Customs Partnership was
a new idea in the financial world and this has been proved very much
effective in catching the evaders. In this connection, he said the NBR
would sit with the leading businessmen and trade bodies from different
sectors and request them to provide information regarding the culprits, who
are dodging revenue. 'As an example, an importer of a specific item
will know better than the NBR officials about the import of the same item
paying less duty or dodging the duty,' he said about using the decoy to
detect dodgers. He said that the selling price of an item would not be
the same when the item is imported by dodging duty. That means the honest
importer will be incurring loss for the dishonest importer. 'We will take
this kind of incident as our hitting point,' he said. The affected
importer will be our source in this connection and provide information as
he is the most compatible person for giving information. Describing the
reason for taking such technique, the NBR member said that the revenue
authority of the government suspected that due to wrong declaration of the
importers the revenue-collecting agency of the government is losing good
amounts of money. 'According to the new rule we cannot go for 100 per
cent verification of the imported items,' he said about the legal lacking.
After introducing the pre-shipment inspection system, the customs
officials could go for physical verification of only 10 per cent of the
imports. He also said that it would not be viable for the customs
officials to go for cent-per cent physical verification. This will slow down
the release of the imported goods from the port, Farid Uddin added. He
said that the NBR is taking preparation at present to discuss the matter
among the businesses and their trade bodies. The NBR is going to adopt
such technique as the government is apprehending less revenue from import
duty in the coming days. The revenue generation from imports will have
to suffer more as the World Trade Organisation is heading towards a
duty-free world, levelling the frontiers on the economic globe. The
finance minister, who has targeted some Tk 61,000 as revenue income in the
current budget, had emphasised improving the revenue collection by any
means during his visits to the NBR several times. He had also directed
the NBR to find out the pockets from where the government could earn
revenues.