NBR chases doctors

The National Board of Revenue (NBR) is rechecking returns and assets of some leading specialist doctors in Bangladesh, suspecting possible concealment of actual income.

NBR officials say they are looking for their assets disproportionate to the income declared in tax returns.

Banks, where the doctors maintain accounts, have been asked by the NBR to furnish details of transactions and savings.

Top eye specialist and health department chief Din Mohammed Nurul Haque is among those under the NBR scanner.

bdnews24.com is in possession of these NBR notices sent out for scrutiny under Sec 113 under the Income Tax Act, 1984.

The NBR has sought details of all savings instruments, term deposits, fixed deposits, current and savings account transactions, loan accounts and foreign currency holdings, credit and debit card transactions of these doctors, their wives and children held since 1st July 2008.

Those doctors under the NBR scanner are Apollo Hospitals' Shahabuddin Talukdar and SM Jahangir, Dhaka Medical College and Hospitals' Associate Professor Nishat Begum, National Heart Disease Institute's Cardiac Surgery Professor Nasir Uddin, gynaecology specialist Professor Naznin Kabir and Professor Neki Akhter, BIRDEM Hospital's Associate Professor Nirmalendu Bikash Bhowmik and Suhrawardy Medical College and Hospitals’ neurology Associate Professor Narayan Chandra Kundu and Md Zillur Rahman.

Other doctors whose income and assets are under NBR scrutiny are United Hospital's Cardiac Surgeon Md Zakir Hossain, BSMM University's eye specialist Zafar Khaled, BIRDEM Hospital's Zafar Ahmed Latif, National Heart Foundation's Professor Fazil-u-Tunnesa and Apollo Hospital's Gulshan Ara.

Financial details of some other doctors, possibly unattached to hospitals, have also been sought by the NBR.

They are Ruksana Hamid, Shirin Akhter, Syed Shamsuddin Ahmed, Zarina Begum, Gholam Nausher Ali, Faizul Alam, Narayan Shankar Das and Sariya Tasnim.

The banks have also been asked to check on how much wealth they inherited from parents.

Besides leading individual doctors, some private healthcare providers are also under the NBR scanner and banks have been asked to provide their details. Banani's Standard Lab, Faridpur's Paricharcha Hospitals Ltd, Gulshan's South Apollo Diagonistics Complex and Mohammadpur's Uttara Heart Centre are among those facing the NBR scrutiny.

NBR officials suspect these doctors and healthcare providers are into big time tax evasion by concealing their real income.