Under pressure to reform tax collection by the International Monetary Fund, the Bangladesh government will likely rely on indirect tax to generate the bulk of revenue in the next fiscal year, which economists and analysts believe will only help widen income and wealth inequality. Meanwhile, policymakers insist that the government has already made quite a few reforms to increase its direct tax collection, and the ongoing process will yield more revenue from the direct tax in the upcoming fiscal year. Since the introduction of value-added tax, or VAT, in 1991, all consecutive governments have relied heavily on indirect taxes to generate revenue as the National Board of Revenue, or NBR, has hardly ever reached the targets for direct tax collection in the annual budget.

Source: bd News24 May 28, 2023 23:42 UTC