The Department of Inland Revenue has collected Rs.105 billion from taxpayers’ money on behalf of the Government for the first five months of 2009, Commissioner General Inland Revenue Mahinda Medagoda said.

“Though we are behind the target we are working hard to catch up with the shortage. We encourage the taxpayers’ by requesting them to pay taxes to be used for development in the North and East. There is a good response for this,” he said.

The targeted amount of total tax money for the year 2009 is Rs. 420 billion. This includes import VAT and nation building tax.

The taxpayers are called upon to go through the returns and we ask them to pay the agreed taxes. Our officers are in constant contact with them in collecting the taxes. We are satisfied with the way the tax is being collected as we have taken effective action, he said. One of the problems at present is the shortage of tax officers. We have a few vacancies for them as some had left us in the recent past.

This has hindered the tax collection process, and we work hard to overcome this, he said.

“We need to widen the tax paying societies. We have already identified some potential segments to collect taxes including mass scale tuition classes and professionals such as doctors and lawyers. It is essential to carry out research to identify the income generating avenues and the trends.

With this is place we will be able to achieve our targets, the Commissioner General said.

Our officers have started to work on VAT refunds and we plan to expedite the work and to complete them as soon as possible.

There was a delay in this and we are in the process of clearing the backlog, he said. We have no immediate plans to branch out as we are already experiencing staff shortages, we need to think twice before we decide on this, Medagoda said.

During the recent air attack, the Inland Revenue building’s 12th floor was damaged and the other floors also suffered damage to some extent. Its records were intact and no files were damaged. However, urgent repair work to the building has been completed and it is expected that the building repairs will be completed by December this year, he said.

Currently, the office work is carried out in two other places apart from the head office building at Fort in Darley Road and Union Place.