Dhaka, Aug. 26 -- The National Board of Revenue (NBR) has announced that manual selection of Value Added Tax (VAT) returns for auditing will remain suspended indefinitely, if necessary, to prevent any scope for corruption in file selection.

"The scrutiny would stay halted until the NBR develops an automated, risk-based audit system for VAT files," NBR Chairman Md Abdur Rahman Khan said on Tuesday during a dialogue titled "Reform in Corporate Tax and VAT: A Justice Perspective for NBR", organised by the Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD) with support from Christian Aid Bangladesh at a city hotel.

Referring to the current VAT law, Mr Khan described it as a "paralysed" framework that could not be made fully efficient between 2012 and 2019 du...