On February 01, 2018, while speaking at a programme finance minister Muhith said to launch a digital system for the pension transfer of civil servants. He said that there will be an outline in the upcoming budget to include the 16-crore people under the pension scheme. This is an innovative thinking to develop our country and to offer the welfare facilities to our citizens.

Though, it is very late for innovating this by the government, but we hope that it will be outlined in the next budget. We will be able to know more about this in the upcoming budget discussion. I think it should be tied up with income tax to increase revenue of the government. Also, it will be a good step to get the actual scenario of the income of the individuals in our country.

In this context, I would like to mention that administrative, managerial and supervisory level employees of private sectors have been taken under the tax net in the last Finance Act 2017-18 based on designations whether their income is taxable or not.

Various controversies have been arisen for taking them under tax net based on designations, not salary. But suddenly, they introduced the new tax clause for the private sector employees. Private sector employees have been facing many difficulties due to the lack of government monitoring, such as low salaries as per competencies, sudden termination, no retirement benefits, no discharge benefits, no PF, harassment and others. Employers have taken the chance of lacking government monitoring and they are generating revenue more and more by deception of employees. As a result, the gap between poor and rich man are increasing day by day.

I think that, said pension scheme will be able to play a role regarding this discrimination. To include the 16 crore people under the pension scheme, 'employed citizens (Private Sector)' may be one of the categories among others for providing pension. In this case, all employees expect to get higher amount as pension. But who will be paid higher? In a general sense, high salaried employees will be paid higher as pension because they used to high living cost than low salaried employees.

The question is that, why will government pay high amount of pension to high salaried employees than low salaried employees, though all are the citizens of our country? To avoid this discrimination, pension amount has to be determined as per contribution of respective employees.

In this case, all employees would like to pay higher contribution to getting a higher amount of pension. To solve this type of problem, a guideline has to be produced that employers will paid contribution for their employees to the government treasury or respective government bank account to generate funds for his employees' pension and it should be based on their salary.

The salary will not be considered, if employers do not submit the same salary sheet to respective income tax circle. As a result, showing low salary expenses in the income tax return by employers to decrease pension contribution resulting high income-high tax liability, expected pension amount of employees will be decreased and vice versa. Then, the government will get the actual scenario of employers and employees' income.

This is the open secret that fakes employees below taxable income and designation has been shown by the most of the employers to reduce their income tax liabilities as well as shown low salaries of higher salaried employees to keep below taxable income or to keep within minimum tax on them.

Resulting of attaching the pension scheme with income tax, employees will encourage to show actual high income in their income tax return. Employers also will show the actual salary in their annual return to reduce their tax. On the other hand, the employer will not show any fake employment to avoid extra pension contribution.

If the upcoming pension outline is being implemented in this way, all concerns will be benefited in many ways. The government will be benefited by taking high revenue because low salaried fake employment will not be shown by the employers and high salaried employees will show actual salary, employees will be benefited from getting high pension amount to enjoy better time in the old life and employer can show actual salary expenses because employees will agree to pay taxes for their high salary to get high pension amount. On the other hand, sending old home by the children will be decreased. Thus, our country may move towards the welfare state.

আমার এ লেখাটি গত ফেব্রুয়ারী ০৪, ২০১৮ খ্রিঃ তারিখে The Daily Observer পত্রিকায় প্রকাশিত।