“These two projects are top in our priority list,” said Pun. Interacting with the local media persons, Pun also said the government would create 50,000 jobs within this fiscal year to provide sustainable income opportunities to the people at home.[break]
During his visit to the district, Pun also inspected the Taxpayer Service Center opened in Baglung some four months ago and instructed tax officials to launch programs to motivate business firms to register with the tax office and pay due taxes.
“The basic function of the service center is to bring more taxpayers into the tax net. But if the taxpayers refused to comply with the law, I instruct the office to take stringent actions and compel them to behave responsibly,” said Pun.
Chief of the Taxpayers Service Center Ram Prasad Subedi, meanwhile, briefed the finance minister that the establishment of the service centre has largely relieved the local taxpayers as they no more need to travel to Inland Revenue Office in Pokhara to pay taxes.
“Local taxpayers are happy with the establishment of this service center. This helped us to collect Rs 63.70 million in taxes in just four months of our operations,” he stated.
However, Subedi noted that still a large number of local business firms were not paying their taxes readily. According to the center, 2,843 business firms have registered with the tax office in the district but only 364 of them have paid tax to the government.
In a bid to do away with this situation, Subedi requested the Minister Pun to depute more human resources at the center. He also requested for other supports such as vehicles, so that the tax officials could travel to different parts of the district to intensify tax compliance drive.
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