NBR for negotiations with tax dodgers

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The National Board of Revenue (NBR) yesterday said it will prefer negotiated settlements with people who have undisclosed money or untaxed income in exchange for taxes and fines paid, rather than taking legal actions against them.

While Anti-corruption Commission (ACC) Secretary Mukhles Ur Rahman told the Daily Star yesterday that the commission has plans of taking steps including sending its officials to the United Kingdom (UK) for training in recovering siphoned off money from offshore.

The NBR announcement came against a backdrop of the High Court (HC) staying the proceedings of nine NBR filed cases following appeals from the defendants who had been convicted by a special court. The HC stay order is premised on alleged procedural misconduct in filing of the cases.

The special court sentenced different high profile corruption suspects including former BNP lawmaker Shajahan Siraj and his family members to different terms of imprisonment in connection with 26 NBR cases, most of whom were tried in absentia.

The convicted in the nine cases filed petitions to the HC against the lower court judgment and got the verdict stayed.

NBR Chairman Badiur Rahman yesterday told journalists, “We will try to settle as many cases as possible out of the court.”

“It does not mean that we are giving up our drive against tax dodgers. The drive against tax dodgers will go on simultaneously,” the NBR chairman added.

The NBR chairman, however, did not specify any fixed rate of the fine to be levied. He said the fines and the due tax for an individual’s undisclosed and untaxed income will be fixed through negotiations.

The NBR chairman talked to the journalists as he was coming out of the ACC head office yesterday afternoon.

“We talked about the cases filed by both the NBR and the ACC and discussed how to coordinate them,” said the NBR chairman.

Replying to a question over the propriety of filing of the cases by both the regulatory agencies, the NBR chairman said both agencies are empowered to file cases under respective laws.

“NBR may file cases without issuing any notice,” said its chairman in reply to a question regarding filing of cases in connection with individuals’ filed tax returns without issuing notices.

The NBR so far filed 37 tax evasion cases till September 23. A total of 73,493 people were identified as taxable individuals during the ongoing income tax survey of NBR, 42,837 of whom are new taxpayers.

According to sources a total of 18,895 individuals paid Tk 492 crore in income tax against their disclosed income of about Tk 2,882 crore till September 24.

Replying to a question regarding expiry of the September 30 deadline for declaring undisclosed income, the NBR chairman said, “An individual may pay tax at any moment he or she wants.”

Earlier, NBR extended the deadline for submitting individual tax returns for 2007-’08 tax year till October 31.

As the process of recovering the money smuggled offshore began, ACC Secretary Mukhles said, “We might send a director general of investigation to Scotland Yard for training and we might get assistance from our embassy in this regard.”

The secretary refused to make any comment on the issue of signing an agreement between Bangladesh and the UK as it is a matter of two states and the concern of government high-ups.

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