November 4: As the government's income has become insufficient to cover even the current expenses in recent times, the Inland Revenue Department has hinted that it will take aggressive steps to prevent the leakage of revenue and expand the scope of tax collection.  

This year, the department is preparing to conduct on-site monitoring of 15,000 taxpayers to prevent leakages of revenue.

Sources at the department said that the recently held conference on revenue concluded that monitoring should be made effective in order to meet the annual revenue target. Following the conference, the department decided to prioritize market monitoring. The department expects to control revenue leakage through intensive and effective monitoring and increase tax collection by facilitating taxpayers. This year, the department is given a target of collecting revenue of Rs 626 billion. However, the department is facing difficulty in meeting even the monthly target.

The department announced that it will increase the use of technology and facilitate administrative process to increase tax collection.

There is a policy to install flow meters in beer manufacturing companies by January of next year and to study installing flow meters in other alcohol producing industries. In terms of tax arrears collection, the department plans to settle 60 percent of the arrears of Rs 48.68 billion at present and to link the records of such arrears maintained in all offices to the electronic system.

Director of the department Raju Payakurel informed that in the current fiscal year, the department is planning to increase the number of taxpayers by issuing/renewing 200,000 personal permanent account numbers, and 176,000 commercial permanent account numbers.

The department is also planning to evaluate the progress of its second strategic plan and to formulate a third strategic plan.

According to him, foreign nationals working in Nepal must submit a permanent account number and tax payment certificate when renewing their work permits and visas.

IRD is also making it mandatory for anyone purchasing four-wheelers to show PAN cards.

Also, there is a plan to issue persona PAN cards to every individuals while issuing citizenship certificate and national identity cards.

At the same time, the department made an action plan to expand the scope of tax collection by implementing the above mentioned criteria.

The department plans to carry out tax inspection and investigation based on the information-based analysis of the revenue risk areas, and to discourage the use of fake invoices, fake excise duty stickers in order to control the revenue leakage.

 The department made an action plan from the conference to settle 90 percent of the applications submitted in the fiscal year 2021/22 and at least 50 percent of the applications registered in the current fiscal year for administrative review due to disagreements on income tax, value added tax and excise duty.