The Cabinet has given in-principle approval to the draft Income Tax Act-2023, with provisions to make it easier to pay taxes online, including relaxing the powers of Income Tax officers to levy taxes.
The meeting was held on Monday (January 23) in the Cabinet meeting room of the Prime Minister's office. Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina presided over the meeting. After the meeting, the Cabinet Secretary briefed the journalists at the Secretariat. Mahbub Hossain.
He said, as a result of this law, the power of the officer in determining income tax has been reduced somewhat. Also, online filing of income tax returns will be made easier. Earlier there were 29 criteria for determining income tax of businessmen. Now it has been reduced to 12.
The Cabinet Secretary said that this law has been made to encourage people to pay taxes and to increase the scope of taxes.
The Cabinet Secretary said that the income tax officer does not have the power to determine the tax amount of the taxpayer in this law. Tax will be determined based on the information provided by the taxpayer. As a result, fixing the amount of tax imposed by the officer will reduce the number of appeals, reduce the harassment of taxpayers.
The secretary also said that there are many ordinances of the military regime which are not yet in the form of laws. The Prime Minister has given instructions to all the ministries to do it quickly.
Besides, the Cabinet has given its final approval to the draft of the Agency to Innovate (A2I) Act. This act is made to support any innovation of the government in the field of information technology.
The organization will have a board of directors of 15 members. The Board will be headed by the Minister of Information and Technology Ministry.
In the meeting, the Prime Minister said that after garments, IT and food processing sectors are the biggest exports of the country. Therefore, this A2I Act will further strengthen the work of the ICT sector.
