'Tax lawyers must have bar membership'

Top tax lawyers demanded the withdrawal of a provision in the Finance Bill 2019 that allows tax officials to practice as a lawyer without being a member of a taxes bar association.

Presently, it is mandatory to obtain the membership of a taxes bar association to practice as an income tax lawyer.

“The abolition of the existing provision will create anarchy in the profession and it will not be possible to maintain discipline,” said Md Suhrab Uddin, convener of the Bangladesh Tax Lawyers’ Association (BTLA), in a media briefing at the hall room of Dhaka Taxes Bar Association (DTBA) on Tuesday.

“This existing provision has been in place for a long time. Now there is a plot to abolish it,” he added.

The BTLA and DTBA jointly organized the event.

Both the organizations, representing 40,000 tax lawyers across the country, have been staging a movement for a week to protest the new provision.

The taxes lawyer leaders said that the movement, which includes sit-ins, will continue until their demand is met.

“We welcome the budget and we will work to help the government to reach its revenue target. But there is a black law in the proposed Finance Bill that seeks to abolish the 174(2) (f) provision,” said Md Suhrab Uddin.

The taxes lawyer leaders accused a section of officials of the National Board of Revenue (NBR) of having ‘misguided’ the NBR Chairman Md Mosharraf Hossain Bhuiyan and most of the members of the revenue board, to include the new provision in the Finance Bill 2019.