Tracking system to alert NBR of inefficiencies, irregularities among staff

The National Board of Revenue (NBR) is planning to introduce a tracking system for its staff to sort out the inefficient and errant ones.

The revenue collecting authority has taken the move to contain any unnecessary harassment of taxpayers in the name of paying tax.

"This will reduce the cases of lower tax imposition also," a high-level NBR official told UNB, on condition of anonymity.

In this connection, he said that the introduction of this system would enhance the judicious capacity and capability of the NBR officials.

"Sometimes a particular person is not a good officer at all, he does not apply his judicious mind. We do not have any system to track these kinds of incidents," he said.

The NBR official said that at present it would not be possible for the NBR to know which officials are not applying their judicious mind while assessing any case.

"We are unable to find what is the assessment quality of the NBR officials through one click, we are trying to introduce this tracking system," he added.

He said that for this move everything of the NBR has to be digitised where all matters will be recorded automatically.

He said that taking less tax to give priority to a particular taxpayer or imposing heavy tax on the another taxpayer, both are unjust and punishable issues.

"Our tax officials have to understand the matter. Unfortunately NBR never identify these matters as well as did not take any action, from now on we will identify these matters and will take actions accordingly," he said.

Chairman Md Abdur Rahman Khan recently in several occasions including pre-budget meetings hinted about this matter of a tracking system for NBR officials' activities.

"We will track the records as we are moving towards that direction of tracking system of the NBR officials," the chairman said in a recent pre-budget meeting.

A member of the Advisory Committee formed to propose positive reforms in the National Board of Revenue (NBR) last October, Muhammad Abdul Mazid, welcomed the move and but said that an evaluation system of the public servants' actions was always there, it is nothing new.

In this connection, he mentioned about the Tax Ombudsman system, which had been scrapped during the previous Awami League time.

"It is the inherent duty of the authority to see officers are performing their duties properly and it comes to the surface during the promotion procedure of the officials," he said.

Mazid, who is also the chairman of the Social Development Foundation (SDF), also put emphasis on an independent body doing the evaluation.

He agreed that through the digital system, the data will be availble much easier.

"In our first reform proposal we also stated that NBR should also be accountable," he said.

He also said that the system should be enforceable and neutral.