More than Tk90,800 crore in tax revenue — roughly Tk25,000 crore in income tax, Tk22,000 crore in customs duties and Tk43,800 crore in VAT-related claims — sits frozen in over 30,000 cases before National Board of Revenue (NBR) appellate tribunals and the courts, some unresolved for more than two decades, The Business Standard reported. The finance ministry is now exploring alternative dispute resolution (ADR) with major disputants including Grameenphone, Robi Axiata, Sonali Bank, Janata Bank and Bangladesh Petroleum Corporation.
Why cases get stuck: NBR officials are institutionally reluctant to grant waivers or settlements after a 2023 episode in which officials who approved interest waivers faced Anti-Corruption Commission scrutiny and had retirement benefits withheld — a chilling effect that pushes officials to default to litigation rather than negotiate. ADR also works better for factual disagreements than for legal questions such as tariff classification, and the officials assigned to mediate disputes are often the same ones who made the original assessment, undermining the independence any resolution process needs.
Counterargument: Defenders of the current system argue that caution around waivers protects against corruption and revenue leakage, and that a rush toward ADR without independent oversight could simply substitute one set of abuses (excessive litigation) for another (under-the-table settlements).
Policy implication: Tk90,800 crore in disputed, uncollected revenue is a meaningful share of Bangladesh’s tax base sitting idle at a time of fiscal pressure; the bottleneck is less about the disputes themselves than about a lack of institutional separation between assessment and adjudication.
Recommendation: Create an ADR panel structurally independent from the original assessing officers, with statutory protection for officials who settle in good faith, and reserve ADR for factual disputes while routing genuine legal questions through a fast-track tribunal.
Confidence level: High on the figures (sourced to government disclosures); moderate on whether ADR reform will succeed, since it depends on institutional changes not yet enacted.
Related reading: Govt seeks ADR with big firms to unlock Tk90,000cr in revenue disputes — The Business Standard
