Revenue Secretary Krishna Hari Baskota inaugurated the new service centers in Thamel, New Road and Maharjgunj on Monday. Taxpayers of those areas can now enjoy internet-based tax filing facility and settle their tax liability under a roof.[break]
Inland Revenue Department (IRD) has announced that it would open 10 additional service centers in the Valley soon. “Of them, two service centers -- one each in Chabahil and New Baneshwor -- will begin operations from coming Sunday,” said Rajan Khanal, director general of IRD. Each center has the capacity to about 2,000 clients a day.
The government had first mooted the establishment of service centers in the budget for 2009/10. The process, however, was delayed after it failed to speed up recruitment of fresh manpower and make arrangements of necessary logistics services.
The government had also announced to open 13 centers outside the Valley as well. However, Khanal told Republica that the centers outside the Valley will not open until next fiscal year.
IRD officials expressed hope that the service centers would play a crucial role in making the revenue offices taxpayer-friendly and contribute in making Tax Compliance Year successful.
After making Permanent Account Number (PAN) compulsory for all income earners, irrespective of whether or not they pay tax, the government has marked the current fiscal year as Tax Compliance Year in a bid to ensure enforcement of the rule and also widen the tax net. Currently, there are just over 250,000 registered taxpayers in the country.
Likewise, the Ministry of Finance has already started outsourcing the taxpayers´ service job to concerned District Treasury Offices (DTO) outside the Valley, mainly in the hilly and remote parts of the country, where taxpayers need to travel for days to settle tax liability. Thanks to the new arrangement, taxpayers in Solukhumbu will no longer need to travel to Lahan in Siraha to register and pay taxes.
“The DTOs are already accepting tax filling and tax settlement and forwarding the documents to nearby tax offices,” said Khanal.
Moreover, IRD is pushing the government to establish Taxpayers Service Unit in DTO, something which it had proposed in the past as well, in a bid to encourage presence of revenue services and deepen tax administration at the local level. It has even proposed to the government to provide incentives to staffers manning the unit at DTO on par with revenue staffers.
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