NBR forms 2 committees to expedite finalisation of new income tax law

The National Board of Revenue has formed two committees to review and finalise the draft of new income tax law within the shortest possible time.

Income tax wing of the NBR recently formed the committees — one for Bangla draft and another for English draft — to prepare the law as soon as possible, officials said.

They said that a seven-member committee headed by NBR member Alamgir Hossain would review the English draft in line with the international best practices and compatibility with the socioeconomic context of the country.

It will submit a report with observations, recommendations to include and exclude issues, if any, inconsistent with international best practices and the country’s prevailing socioeconomic context from the draft law, they said.

It will also identify the possible constraints on implementation of the proposed law and suggest strategies for smooth implementation.

The committee will also gather opinions from field-level income tax officials about the applicability of the draft law.

The proposed law will also be aligned with most of the provisions of the existing Income Tax Ordinance-1984.

NBR officials said that another committee headed by income tax commissioner Meftah Uddin Khan would assist the external legislative expert on finalising the Bangla draft of the law.

The NBR is expected to appoint soon the expert having background of legal drafting.

They said that two drafting teams of the revenue board had almost completed the draft of the law, which was initially scheduled to come into force from July this year.

Finalising the Bangla draft has been delayed because of not appointing the external expert, they said, adding that the drafting team had been seeking appointment of the expert over the last one year.

Both the committees will submit progress reports periodically to NBR member (income tax policy) Kanon Kumar Roy who will supervise the activities of the committees.

The proposed law will be mainly in Bangla with official and authentic English version.

The revenue board first in the fiscal year 2010-2011 took the move to update the income tax ordinance and later drafted a Direct Tax Code-2013 with the help of International Finance Corporation.

The plan of framing tax code was abandoned finding it difficult to implement as it was inconsistent with the country’s socioeconomic context.
Later, the NBR decided to frame the law in Bangla.

The finance minister in his budget speech for the current fiscal year (2018-2019) expected that the government would be able to place the new income tax law before parliament at the start of next financial year.

Emerging business dimensions and international taxation issues like merger and acquisition, transfer pricing, money laundering, profit shifting and money laundering, digitisation of tax system, expansion of tax net, minimising the scope of tax exemption, reduction of corporate tax rate, narrowing the existing mismatches in the rules and regulations would be addressed in the new law.