Top VAT-payers to be honoured today
The National Board of Revenue will honour the country’s top VAT-payers today in its bid to encourage compliance and raise awareness on the need to pay tax to finance national development.
Some 144 have become eligible to be recognised as the highest VAT-payers in the fiscal year of 2017-18. Of them, nine would be awarded for depositing the highest amount of the indirect tax nationally.
The firms have been nominated as per rules that say that a firm would qualify if it pays 10 percent higher value-added tax than the previous fiscal year and has no tax dispute, pending cases or any tax and bank loan default, said Bashir Ahmed, first secretary for VAT Implementation & IT of the NBR.
Thirty-four firms, comprising nine highest VAT-payers nationally and 25 from Dhaka division will be recognised at an event in Dhaka. The rest will be awarded by field offices in other divisions.
This will be 14th year the NBR would honour the highest VAT-paying firms in an effort to increase collection from the segment, also known as consumption tax, and reduce evasion.
Introduced in July 1991, the VAT has become the biggest contributor to the NBR’s revenue collection from FY1995-96 and has been maintaining the lead since then.
Yet, significant amount of non-compliance prevails in the VAT system and there is substantial scope for increasing collection of the indirect tax, according to a World Bank report on methodology to measure the VAT gap in Bangladesh in 2014.
The study said the VAT gap, the difference between the expected VAT revenue and the amount actually collected, was 56 percent in 2012-13.
In order to create awareness and increase compliance on VAT payment, the NBR has been observing the VAT Day since 2012. The revenue administration also organises the VAT Week.
This fiscal year, the NBR targets to collect Tk 117,672 crore from VAT, which is 36 percent of the total tax collection goal.
Collection of the indirect tax, however, grew 1.79 percent year-on-year to Tk 24,751 crore in the July-October period of the current fiscal year.
The NBR logged 17 percent growth in VAT collection annually over the last decade.
