Dhaka: The National Board of Revenue (NBR) has asked its field offices across the country to take effective and pragmatic steps towards collecting outstanding taxes.

The NBR chairman Md Nojibur Rahman recently gave the directive to his fellow colleagues, as the Income Tax Wing of the NBR has failed to achieve the target for the first month of the current fiscal.

“The NBR chairman gave the directive to make the NBR officials across the country more active regarding revenue collection,” a senior NBR official told UNB on condition of anonymity, as he isn’t authorized to speak on the revenue collection agency’s behalf.

The shortfall in revenue collection (income tax) in July was Tk 360 crore, although the total collection for the month, at Tk 2344 crore, was 15 percent higher than the corresponding figure for July 2014.  The target though, in line with the ambitious overall target in the annual budget, was set at Tk 2704 crore.

The target for the starting month of the 2015-16 fiscal was Tk 2704 crore while the collection is Tk 2344 crore. The collection in the same month of the last year was Tk 2044 crore.Nine tax zones out of 31 failed to achieve their target in the first month.

The NBR chairman has also asked tax officers to build partnerships with different chambers, trade bodies, different government offices, district administrations and Bangladesh Border Guard (BGB), as well as increasing the range of cooperation.

“The NBR chairman gave the directives for attaining the revenue target in the running 2015-16 fiscal,” the NBR official said. The revenue target for the NBR is an unprecedented Tk 176,370 crore. Last year the target was Tk 149,720 crore, before being revised to Tk 135,028 crore in the revised budget.

According to the government’s sums for the current fiscal, Tk 64,971 crore will come from income tax, Tk 64,262 crore from VAT, and Tk 18,752 crore will be collected from import duty. The target for export duty has been fixed at Tk 37 crore, excise duty Tk 1,239 crore and supplementary duty Tk 25,875 crore.

“We are now under a little bit of pressure to realise the money as the target for this year is comparatively high,” revealed the NBR official, adding that the Finance Minister in his budget speech also said this target is ‘highly ambitious’.

In the directives, the NBR chairman asked the field offices to hold review meeting on revenue collection regularly, and create awareness among the people regarding the taxes.

Besides, he also asked to seek out potential sectors for collecting VAT at the local level, and put special attention on the large companies.

Additionally, the NBR chairman has asked for increased monitoring of the ‘tax at source’ to increase tax collection, and select potential files for audit.

The NBR chairman also asked the concerned officials to take effective steps for settling the tax-related cases pending in different courts across the country for years.

In this connection, he asked the concerned officials to expedite the implementation and ramp up the practice of Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR), to ease the burden on the country’s courts.

There are a whopping 22,747 income tax-, VAT- and customs-related cases pending in the High Court. The amount related with these cases is said to be no less than Tk 25,783 crore.

Most of them are income tax-related cases, but most of the money is stuck in the VAT-related cases.

Some 375 cases have so far been settled through ADR involving revenue worth Tk 119.87 crore.