It is disappointing to see that the government has been consistently failing to meet its own tax collection targets. In the 2022-23 fiscal year, it failed to reach the target it had set in the budget, falling short by Tk 44,728 crore. This phenomenon has been going on for 11 consecutive years, according to a report in this daily. Clearly, our existing taxation system is not efficient enough, and something needs to change.

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For a better fiscal space, we need efficient tax system

Granted, the last three years have been difficult economy-wise. Fallouts from the pandemic and the war in Ukraine caused shocks to the global economy, the ripples of which were felt pretty strongly in Bangladesh. But what about the years before that? Why is the government still resisting calls to address the core issues that have been hindering our tax collection growth? Bangladesh's tax-GDP ratio was 7.5 percent in FY2021-22 – the lowest in South Asia, and one of the lowest in the world. Given the rate at which our economy has grown, such an abysmally low ratio is totally unacceptable.

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Don't put unjust tax burden on citizens

To address these issues, experts have been suggesting an overhaul of our taxation system for a long time now. This newspaper alone published a number of analyses explaining why, and how, the system should be reformed. To this end, several recommendations have been made, such as expansion of the tax net, modernisation and capacity-building of the National Board of Revenue (NBR), crackdown on tax evasion at all levels, reducing dependency on indirect taxes such as VAT and customs, finding new sources of tax revenue, etc. Reform is also crucial to meet the conditionalities set by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for the $4.7 billion it is lending to Bangladesh.

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Why this relentless assault on anti-graft efforts?

There is no point in delaying the reform that must happen if we want to improve our revenue growth and domestic resource mobilisation. Seeing as the government has set an ambitious tax collection target of Tk 430,000 crore for the NBR for FY2024, it must introduce systematic changes in our taxation process as soon as possible to achieve that target.