The revenue board has asked the Department of Immigration and Passports (DIP) to pay Tk 5.85 billion in unpaid VAT and penalty for defaulting on tax payment.
Officials said the National Board of Revenue (NBR) recently placed the demand for the amount as the DIP had collected VAT against the issuance and renewal of passport to the service-seekers        
The board demanded arrears in VAT that the DIP was supposed to have collected at a rate of 15 per cent from the passport-seekers between July 01, 2010 and December 27, 2014.
The NBR asked the DIP to pay the arrears after collecting data on the tax lying with its different field offices across the country.
The total amount includes Tk 3.76 billion as unpaid VAT and Tk 2.09 billion penalty for the long-overdue payment.
The government had imposed 15 per cent VAT in the budget for Fiscal Year (FY) 2009-10. As per the Finance Bill 2010, the DIP was to collect the amount with the passport-issuance and-renewal fees charged from the applicants.
Talking to the FE, Director-General of the DIP Brigadier- General Md Masud Rezwan said it is not possible to pay the demanded VAT that the department had not collected from the applicants for passports.
"We have written about the matter to the ministry of home to resolve the issue. The ministry is taking necessary steps accordingly," he said.
The immigration and passport department in a recent letter responded to the NBR on payment of the VAT arrears.
"We did not receive any instruction from the ministry of home before December 21, 2014 on collection of VAT on passport issuance and renewal fees," wrote Md Fazlul Huq, additional director-general (administration and finance), on behalf of the DG, in a letter to the NBR.
The DIP says it had not collected the VAT from the passport applicants before that date.
"It is not possible to pay VAT as demanded by the NBR since the amount had not been collected from the passport applicants," he said.
The department has requested the home ministry to allocate the amount to pay the VAT but the ministry termed the demand 'illogical' by sending a letter.
Talking to the FE, a senior VAT official said it is the responsibility of the relevant authority to discharge their duties on collecting and depositing VAT with the public exchequer, as assigned by the government.
"If any entity or company failed to do so, it would have to pay the arrears from their own coffers or seek allocation from the ministry of finance," he said.
The NBR has set the highest target for VAT collection at Tk 727.64 billion for the current FY among its three wings. VAT collection is expected to contribute 35.8 per cent of the total tax-revenue target of Tk 2.03 trillion for FY 2016-17.
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Source: The Financial Express