NBR to digitise its activities under master plan: Chairman

The National Board of Revenue (NBR) has taken a master plan to digitise all of its activities to ensure that digital services reach the taxpayers.

"In future, all activities of the NBR will be through digital platform. We will digitise everything. We are formulating a master plan, and we have taken the project accordingly," NBR Chairman Md Abdur Rahman Khan said today (16 March).

He was addressing a workshop on Identifying problems of e-Return system and find out the way to solve those. It was held at the multipurpose conference room of the Revenue Building.

Chaired by NBR Member (Tax Information Management and Services) Abu Hannan Delwar Hossain, the workshop was also attended by NBR Member (Tax Administration and Human Resource Management) GM Abul Kalam Kaikobad as the special guest.

The NBR chairman said that from 1 July the online return submission system will be active for submitting income tax return.

Responding to concern of preserving data in the online system, he said all data will be preserved and the NBR will ultimately put the online system in a cloud-based storage system.

"If we can do that, hopefully there will be no storage problem," he added.

Rahman said that from the next fiscal year all corporate return will be submitted through online system.

"We are wanting to make it compulsory for everyone to submit their income tax return through online with some exceptions," he said.

He also mentioned that through this there will be no unnecessary phobia regarding audit selection as errors in tax calculation will be on the shoulder of the system introduced by the NBR.

"There will be available data, we will use artificial intelligence to find out file automatically for audit selection ensuring objective criteria, there will be no human touch at then," he said.

The NBR opened the online return filing system for taxpayers from 9 September last year in order to simplify the income tax return filing and tax payment system for the fiscal year 2024-2025.

By using the website www.etaxnbr.gov.bd, individual taxpayers easily and quickly submitted their income tax returns for the fiscal year 2024-2025 online and download and print copies of the submitted returns, acknowledgement letters, income tax certificates, TIN certificates.

At the same time, taxpayers are getting the benefits of tax payment and tax adjustment through internet banking, card payment (debit/credit card) and mobile banking.

Based on the needs and opinions of the taxpayers, the online return filing process has been gradually simplified and made more taxpayer-friendly, and the e-return system has received a huge response from the taxpayers, as a result of which more than 14.96 lakh taxpayers have filed their returns online this year and more than 18.90 lakh taxpayers have completed registration for e-return.

The NBR hoped that if the existing problems of the system can be identified and eliminated, all taxpayers will be able to file income tax returns online from the next tax year.

Initially, the online tax return has been open for all taxpayers as per their wish.

But later the NBR has made it mandatory for the government employees under the jurisdiction of income tax circles located in Dhaka North, Dhaka South, Gazipur and Narayanganj City Corporation, as well as sections of the private sector.

Online filing of income tax returns has been made mandatory for working officers/employees of all scheduled banks, all mobile telecom service providers and some multinational companies namely Unilever Bangladesh Limited, British American Tobacco Bangladesh Company Limited, Marico Bangladesh Limited, Berger Paints Bangladesh Limited, Bata Shoe Company (Bangladesh) Limited, Nestlé Bangladesh Plc.