National Board of Revenue chairman Md Abdur Rahman Khan has cautioned NBR officials against arbitrarily locking importers’ and exporters’ business identification numbers out of mere suspicion.
Instead, he instructed them to take actions based on records stored in the ASYCUDA system and proper risk assessment.
He was speaking at separate views exchange meetings with commissioners from taxes, VAT and customs regarding the assessment of July revenue collection on Thursday at NBR headquarters in the capital, according to a press release issued on Friday.
‘Honest and compliant importers and exporters must not be harassed through unnecessary BIN locks,’ he added.
He directed all customs houses and intelligence units to clearly explain in every monthly revenue meeting why a BIN was locked and how much additional tax was realised as a result of such actions.
‘The board’s primary focus should be on ensuring trade facilitation while strictly enforcing existing laws to achieve the targeted revenue collection,’ he added.
On VAT enforcement, the NBR chairman urged officials to move beyond the idea of growth for its own sake and instead ensure that legally due taxes were collected fairly.
‘Honest taxpayers who comply with VAT laws should not be put undue pressure. However, those evading VAT must be brought into the net and penalised as per law,’ he added.
He also directed swift digitisation of all bond-related activities within a month, similar to the Bangladesh Single Window and online income tax return submission systems.
He instructed the officials to set a strict timeline for each service and mentioned that upon failure to deliver within the deadline, measures against responsible officials would be taken.
‘If bonded goods are found on local markets, we must revoke the importer’s bond licence immediately,’ he added, saying that the officials complicit in misuse would also face legal consequences.
He also instructed them to report the bond audit results in every monthly review, while auctioning of idle containers should be expedited to reduce port congestion, with a December 2025 deadline set for clearance.
In the income tax review, the NBR chairman advised expanding manpower at call centres across commissionerates to support taxpayers with e-return filing.
He directed integration of the e-TIN and e-TDS systems to ensure automatic and real-time synchronisation of taxpayer information.
He also said that the existing automated, transparent and impartial audit selection process for individual taxpayers should be extended to corporate taxpayers at the earliest.
Taxpayers with TINs who fail to submit returns must be served notices, he added, saying that they would take further procedures as per law.
To strengthen revenue mobilisation, he called for enhanced intelligence operations to detect tax evasion and faster processing of submitted returns under the Income Tax Act.
Notably, the country’s revenue collection witnessed an increase of 24.32 per cent to Tk 27,247 crore in July of the 2025-26 financial year, which was Tk 21,916.08 crore in July of FY25.
Meanwhile, the collection was 9.51 per cent or Tk 2,864 crore lower than the target of Tk 30,110.96 crore set by the NBR for July of FY26.