FinMin announces taxpayer incentive prize winners

KATHMANDU: The Ministry of Finance (MoF) announced the winners of the taxpayer incentive prize at an event today.

Finance Minister Dr Swarnim Wagle selected 15 winners and one bumper prize winner under the programme initiated by the Inland Revenue Department. The department said coupon number 007315254493 won the Rs 1,000,000 bumper prize.

The holder of the winning coupon entered the draw after purchasing goods worth Rs 250 from Shiva Krishna General Store.

Launching the Taxpayer Incentive Gift Programme, Minister Wagle said it would help promote a culture of issuing and receiving VAT bills and support growth of the formal economy. He said the programme, announced in this fiscal year’s budget, would make the public financial system more transparent.

“We need to move towards a billing culture. All transactions should be recorded. Our goal is to create a public finance system where it is transparently visible how much tax is collected from citizens and where that money is spent,” he said.

Officials arranged for transactions made through digital payments to be automatically recorded in the system. The minister said that in the first phase transactions worth about Rs 25.6 million took place and the system had included over Rs 7 billion, and he expressed confidence that monthly transactions would reach billions in the coming days.

“The programme encourages many taxpayers to use digital methods, to give and take bills, and to come under the tax net,” he said. “It will be effective in controlling revenue leakage and expanding the formal economy.”

Inland Revenue Department Director General Bhishma Kumar Bhusal said the department selected winners of the daily and first fortnight bumper prizes from July 17 to 31 using a computer system. He said officials used the “cryptographically secure uniform random sampling without replacement” method to ensure every coupon had an equal chance, to prevent the same coupon being selected more than once in a single draw, and to keep the selection process fair and secure.