Anti-tax evasion drive: 100 IRD teams monitor 1,100 firms nationwide

KATHMANDU, FEB 10 -

As part of its anti-tax evasion drive, the Inland Revenue Department (IRD) on Thursday mobilised 100 teams across the country.

The teams monitored about 1,100 firms on the first day of the two-day campaign, bringing a number of businesses into tax net. According to IRD, it is an additional campaign besides its regular monitoring and other special investigations.

IRD Director General Tankamani Sharma said 12 teams that reported their supervision of 378 firms, forced 47 businesses to register with Permanent Account Number (PAN), 22 with Value Added Tax (VAT) and other 22 were asked to pay rental taxes. “The team members snatched computers of the some hotels to check the actual transactions, while some liquor shops were taken action for not having licences,” said Sharma, adding that further action will be taken against those found involved in major tax evasion.

Given the shortage of Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG), Sharma said the teams have been assigned to carry out monitoring on LPG dealers to ascertain whether they are creating artificial shortage or running businesses without VAT registration or have cleared due taxes.

“The main motive behind running this campaign is to increase tax compliance by increasing awareness among taxpayers and the general public,” said Sharma.

IRD mobilised about 350 staffers for this campaign, with 60 teams mobilised in the Valley—47 in Kathmandu, 13 in Lalitpur and Bhaktapur. Outside the Valley, IRD teams were mobilised in Bhadrapur, Biratnagar, Dharan, Lahan, Birgunj, Hetauda, Bharatpur, Pokhara, Butwal, Bhairahawa, Krishnanagar, Nepalgunj, Dang, Dhangadhi and Mahendranagar.

IRD plans to run this campaign once a week beginning mid-February and monitor 25,000 firms at the end of the current fiscal year.

With tax enforcing agencies getting strict due to their failure to meet the revenue target in initial months, the collection has improved lately and the growth rate reached almost 22 percent in the six month of this fiscal year.

IRD has also started crackdown on taxpayers not clearing their liabilities by suspending their bank accounts, businesses and fixed assets. The department started its tax recovery drive last month, after outstanding tax dues began piling up for a long time and reached more than Rs 24 billion.

According to IRD, outstanding income tax and excise duty amount to Rs 20 billion and the rest consists of VAT and TDS (tax deduction at source).

Source: Kantipur