National Board of Revenue (NBR) Chairman Md. Abdur Rahman Khan stated that importers and exporters should not be harmed under any circumstances. He made these remarks during a meeting held on Thursday in the NBR conference room to review the progress of revenue collection in July.

Abdur Rahman Khan said, “Our primary focus should be to ensure trade facilitation while ensuring proper implementation of existing laws to achieve the desired revenue collection.”

He advised that rather than locking the BIN of importers or exporters based on suspicion, authorities should consider the revenue risks based on past records stored in the ASYCUDA system and take appropriate actions accordingly.

He emphasized that importers and exporters who are honest and compliant should not be harmed unnecessarily by locking their BINs. Every Customs House and intelligence department should provide a clear explanation at monthly revenue meetings regarding why an importer’s or exporter’s BIN was locked and how much additional revenue was collected from each action. The VAT law must be implemented properly to collect taxes according to the law.

He also advised officials to move away from the idea of just focusing on growth or increase in revenue collection.

The Chairman further stated that it is not appropriate to apply undue pressure on those who pay VAT honestly. In terms of VAT collection, efforts should be made to bring those who do not pay VAT into the tax net and take exemplary action against those evading VAT under the law.

To increase VAT collection, the Chairman instructed that all businesses whose VAT registration is mandatory under the law should ensure VAT registration.

He directed concerned authorities to take swift action to make all bond activities online within the next month, just like the Bangladesh Single Window and online income tax return submissions.

Regarding the online bond activities, he recommended that a specific timeline be set for each service, and if the required service is not provided within the specified time, the concerned officials should be held accountable.

While reviewing the revenue collection situation in the income tax division, the NBR Chairman suggested that taxpayers should be able to get answers to their questions at all times through a call center. He also recommended hiring adequate staff in all Commissionerates to assist with e-return filing. He instructed that the ‘e-TIN’ and ‘e-TD’ systems be connected quickly, ensuring that taxpayer information in the ‘e-TIN’ system is automatically updated in the ‘e-TD’ system in real-time.

The Chairman urged the highest application of existing laws to increase the collection of outstanding taxes. He also instructed that all audit cases be disposed of promptly in line with the recent audit guidelines from NBR, generating tax claims and ensuring tax collection. The meeting emphasized accelerating audit activities to increase income tax collection. It was also highlighted that the automated, transparent, and impartial audit selection process for individual taxpayers must be implemented swiftly for corporate taxpayers as well.