The curious case of NBR’s online tax return filling project
The online tax return project was running well for the income tax department in Bangladesh till December 2019. This problem occurred when the agreement of the National Board of Revenue’s with the vendor expired at the end of 2019.
After a month, the NBR chairman gave a shocking statement on this matter. He wrote to the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and termed this project as a failure. Some of his allegations were pointed towards FTP Information System Corporation, Vietnam. He accused the FTP of being highly non-responsive about technical queries. After investigations, it was found that the system didn’t provide proper outputs.
But the response from ADB didn’t match with that of NBR’s chairman. As per the statement of ADB, this project was successful.
They built this infrastructure with a motive that at least 75% of the large taxpayers will switch to the online method. But sadly, they failed in achieving it. Only about 0.33% of the total returns were submitted online.
Response from IMED
After the ADB, IMED (Implementation Monitoring and Evaluation Division) published a report on this matter.
The report said that the online tax return process is now possible through this system. It also introduced a certain level of transparency in the system. But the main moto was not achieved. As most of the people are still using the same traditional method to file their tax returns, the effort put into building this infrastructure seems worthless. This online tax return system has not been overall so effective in fulfilling the needs of taxpayers.
IMED also alleged that the software company was accessing the confidential information of the users. This kind of thing is completely unacceptable.
NBR’s report to IMED
NBR reported to the IMED a year before IMED publish their report on this topic. In that report, NBR marked this project as successful. They also said that some features are missing like e-payment. But they said that all these things will be added in the later upgrades.
There were some problems but only due to lack of skills in the team members. Local teams didn’t engage properly, which resulted in an inadequate number of team members.
The latest report of NBR
In the latest report, NBR said that the final report said that the IMED report was not complete. They didn’t mention all the relevant points in that report.
NBR said that the scope for online payment is completely missing here. As the contract with FTP has expired, a 7-member team has been assigned to operate BRITAX.
What do the taxpayers say?
We have talked to some of the taxpayers about this matter. And almost all have agreed that the online tax filing system is not user-friendly. They find the interface too technical to use and some of the essential features like e-payment are missing. This is ridiculous when the online tax return system lacks the e-payment system. That is another big disappointment.
Final thoughts
Different opinions are coming from different sources. Some authorities demand this system to be discarded permanently while others are asking to modify it.
A 7-member team has been appointed for maintaining this system. They are waiting for the skilled human resource to be ready for gaining full authority of the system.
