NBR field offices to launch drives against unauthorised foreigners, their employers

The National Board of Revenue has instructed its income tax commissioners for conducting drives against unauthorised and tax evading foreigners and their employers.

The government in the budget for the current fiscal year 2015-16 restricted employment of foreigners without work permit and introduced heavy penalty and imprisonment for employers for violation of the law.

Income tax wing of the revenue board has already asked the country’s employers for not employing unauthorised foreign nationals and requested the regulators and trade bodies to take steps for ensuring the compliance of the law.

At a meeting with the commissioners on Wednesday, the revenue board chairman Md Nojibur Rahman asked the commissioners to bring to book the employers of such foreigners through imposing penalty and taking other legal actions, a commissioner who attended the meeting told New Age on Thursday.

The NBR arranged the meeting to review the revenue earnings in the last financial year and prepare strategic plans to achieve the target for the current fiscal year.

NBR members, high officials and all the 61 field level commissioners of income tax, value-added tax and customs attended the meeting.

‘The chairman instructed us to start drives as soon as possible and make the process visible by next one month,’ he said.

The commissioners were also asked to strengthen the enforcement of the tax laws through vigorous inspection, investigation, intelligence activities and conducting drives to prevent tax evasion, he added.

NBR officials said that even many legal foreigners also evaded income tax with the help of their employers.

According to the Income Tax Ordinance-1984, the taxmen can impose penalty on companies and the owners as much as 50 per cent of their total payable income tax, or Tk 5 lakh, whichever is higher, as fine for recruiting unauthorised foreign nationals.

All other tax benefits including tax holiday applicable for the companies will also be scraped for violation of the law.

According to the ordinance, the punishment for employment of a foreigner without prior approval from the Board of Investment or any other competent

authority of the government will be up to three years in jail, but not less than three months.

Though there is no official data, taxmen estimate that there are several lakhs illegal foreigners, mainly from neighbouring India, Pakistan, China and Sri Lanka, and many from African and Western countries in the country.

They are working in the readymade garment industry, buying houses, liaison offices of multinational companies, IT, different joint-venture companies and other manufacturing industries in the country.

In 2013, India’s largest circulated technology magazine Siliconindia said in a report that a total of five lakh Indians were working in Bangladesh at that time and they sent US$ 3.7 billion in remittance.

But according to the BoI, on an average around 12,000 foreign nationals receive work permits from the board every year. A few thousand more foreigners also work in the country with permission from Bangladesh Export Processing Zones Authority and a few hundred with permission from the NGO Affairs Bureau.

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