NBR officials to get advanced audit training

Officials of the National Board of Revenue (NBR) will get advanced audit training to ensure improved compliance from taxpayers and increase revenue collection.

A six-day training course, funded by the European Union, titled ‘Advanced Audit Training for NBR Income Tax Officials’ has been launched on Sunday to that end.

 Speaking on the occasion as the chief guest, NBR Chairman Abu Hena Md Rahmutal Muneem said, “NBR has achieved significant progress on revenue collection and we need to be going forward with greater in-house capabilities to ensure a higher contribution.”

The training course consists of five different courses. It will be attended by NBR income tax officials who are already well experienced in the role of auditing large, complex corporations and industries. 

Speaking on the importance of effective tax administration, Muneem said “In recent years, audits have been developed as a very useful tool by tax administration to improve compliance and enhance collections. But due to a lack of adequate manpower and other resources, audit processes have not been able to cover the entire taxpayer population.

“It has become necessary to develop the capacity of our own officials for better results with available resources. These advanced audit courses will improve the ability of the tax officials to conduct audit activities more efficiently and will increase revenue yield from audits.”

Also speaking on the occasion, NBR Member Tax Administration & HRM Shaheen Akhter said the training courses will meet the specific needs of the officials to perform more efficiently.

NBR Member and TA Focal Point Jahid Hasan said the training would address financial audit, tax audit within computerised accounting environments. Besides, the training will give specific focus on conducting tax audits within the banking, insurance and telecom industries in Bangladesh. 

Jurate Smalskyte Melville, acting head of the Cooperation of the Delegation of the European Union in Bangladesh, said digitalisation of taxation is accelerating, which is of high importance, not only for reducing paper waste for a greener environment, but also to make tax systems in Bangladesh more efficient.

She added that officials at NBR will have to keep up with this fast-changing environment.

NBR Member for Audit, Intelligence and Investigation Pradyut Kumar Sarkar said audit is an essential tool available for NBR to ensure compliance and although it is often frowned upon by businesses.

The objective is to make these audit interventions shorter, more targeted and less intrusive to business, he added.