The National Board of Revenue (NBR) is going to take strong action soon to collect taxes from the parties involved in the Bangladesh Premier League (BPL) T20 tournament.

The board will set its next course of action in a meeting within this week.

“We have allowed them enough time to pay the taxes. But unfortunately they failed to do so and are seeking more time. We will set our next course of action by this week,” said Kanon Kumar Roy, director general of Directorate of Inspection (Taxes) of NBR in Dhaka yesterday.

“We will take every measure to realise the taxes the government is entitled to and none of the parties involved will get a chance to escape,” said Roy, also head of a NBR team formed to monitor all the BPL financial transactions.

The tax administrator earlier projected to realise over Tk 200 million as taxes from parties involved with the first version of BPL between February 9 and 29 this year. The parties included event management firm Game On Sports, the six franchises, both foreign and local players and the BPL governing council.

However, the NBR so far received only Tk 10 million. The price of all teams played in the tournament was US$ 7 million (Tk 574m).

The concerned parties assured the NBR of paying the taxes by April 30. But they failed to do so and paid only a nominal amount so far. Many of them are also requesting the board to extend the timeline once again.

“Barishal Burners has paid only Tk 1.9 million as taxes in this time while many of them are requesting us to extend the time again,” Kanon Kumar Roy said.

NBR officials said as per the rule, NBR will deduct 25 percent tax against payments to foreign players and 10 percent from those to local cricketers. The revenue board estimated to earn Tk 96.5 million from the foreign players and Tk 19 million from the local players as taxes.

Till date the local players have got only 20-25 per cent of their total payment from the franchises though the foreign players got more.

Meanwhile, on March 30, Bangladesh Cricket Board (BCB) held a meeting with the owners of all participating teams of the tournament to discuss issues related to players’ payment.

In the meeting, the franchise owners gave their commitment to the board that all outstanding payment of overseas players will be cleared by May 9 and the dues of the local cricketers will be settled by 31 May.

The Daily Sun/Bangladesh/ 7th May 2012