Home ›› 13 Jun 2022 ›› Front
The National Board of Revenue (NBR) will install 10,000 Electronic Fiscal Devices (EFDs) in Dhaka, Chattogram and other big cities in the 2022-23 financial year to prevent evasion of Value-Added Tax (VAT).
Finance Minister AHM Mustafa Kamal has kept an allocation to install EFDs in different chains and super shops in the proposed budget for FY2022-23.
If EFD, an improved version of the Electronic Cash Register that the National Board of Revenue (NBR) imports, is used in business, the money collected as VAT will be automatically transferred to NBR’s main server.
In this system, sources said, traders will not be able to hide their sale information and the real information of daily transactions will be transferred to the NBR server, which will help to reduce fraud.
In the budget speech, the finance minister said, “Electronic Fiscal Device (EFD) / Sales Data Controller (SDC) have been set up from FY2020-21 to increase revenue collection from various retail and wholesale businesses.
“About 4,595 EFD / SDC machines have already been installed in various sectors. A total of 10,000 EFD / SDC machines are planned to be installed in various business establishments by June 2023.”
He added, “Alongside current government initiative to install more EFDs/SDCs, procurement process is underway for hiring outsourced services to collect revenue through installation of EFD / SDC. Efforts are being made to increase the scope and coverage of VAT, which will consequently increase tax to GDP ratio.
“I firmly believe that steps, which are already undertaken, will lead to the desired success in VAT collection by 2026.”
The minister tabled a Tk 6,78,064 crore budget for FY2022-23 in parliament on June 9, with a projected GDP size of Tk 44,12,849 crore and a Tk 2,45,064 crore deficit.
The government’s total revenue target for the next fiscal is Tk 4,33,000 crore. NBR has been charged with collecting Tk 3,70,000 crore while Tk 63,000 crore will be collected from other sources under non-NBR tax and non-tax receipt.
Of the Tk 3,70,000 target, NBR will have to collect Tk 1,36,000 crore or 37 per cent through VAT.
Officials at the NBR’s VAT department said huge amounts of VAT are evaded at the retail and wholesale levels every year.
Revenue earning will increase if all retail and wholesale businesses are brought under the machine system, they said.
The NBR is generally the largest provider of funding in every year’s national budget. It provides 85 per cent of the total funding from VAT, income tax and import duties.
In the 10 months (July-April) of the outgoing FY2021-22, NBR has collected Tk 2,27,756.59 crore in revenues — marking a 15.27 per cent growth compared to the same period of FY2020-21.
During this period, NBR collected Tk 84,916.56 crore through VAT and Tk 69,110.28 crore via income tax.
However, to achieve this fiscal’s target, NBR will have to collect Tk 1,02,243.41 crore in the last two months (May and June), which is nearly impossible as it is lagging far behind.
In FY2021-22, NBR was given a revenue target of Tk 3,30,000 crore, which is 55 per cent of the Tk 6,03,681 crore budget with a total revenue target of Tk 3,89,000 crore.
