Bangladesh gets Income Tax Litigation Systems digitization support from EU

National Board of Revenue (NBR) is making significant progress in terms of mobilizing domestic revenue administration.

It has been done through modernizing the Internal Audit Unit after being supported by a project funded by the European Union (EU).

The technical assistance project is funded by EU to support the implementation of the Public Financial Management (PFM) reform strategic plan in Bangladesh, which is implemented by DT Global.

That project arranged a two-day-long workshop at Gazipur on digitalization of income tax litigation systems for the stakeholders including officials of NBR, Attorney General Office, Institute of Chartered Accountants of Bangladesh (ICAB), and Institute of Cost and Management Accountants of Bangladesh (ICMAB).

In collaboration with NBR the workshop has held between October 11 to October 12.

The President of Taxes Appellate Tribunal, Md. Nazmul Karim, attended the workshop as chief guest while member of Taxes Appeal and Exemption Md Iqbal Hossain, member of International Taxes and Tax Information Management and Services A K M Badiul Alam and member of Taxes Legal and Enforcement Ahammad Ullah were also present among others.

The initial workshop held in December 2022 where topics, such as case management framework, standard operational procedures and policies, process workflows, online appeal forms, and supporting data model; were included.

Participants are now anticipated to complete a digitalized litigation (process of taking legal action) plan that includes appeal forms and an administrative procedure capable of hybrid system (processing both online and paper-based appeal filings), according to the organizers.

They also stated that this blueprint will act as the basis for the creation of software, which will play a key role in fostering the development of a more effective and transparent system for handling taxation.

The cooperation is being offered with the intention of improving revenue governance and boosting the institutional capacity of the NBR by altering the system‍‍`s current processes and practices for administering taxes.