The 15-month survey starts initially in Dhaka and then will spread across the country. Eight survey teams, each comprising three members, will conduct the survey in the capital.

The survey will expand outside Dhaka from the next fiscal year.

"These survey teams will visit business and professional houses only to identify new taxpayers. Nobody will visit any home," NBR Chairman Badiur Rahman told journalists invited to a meeting of tax officials yesterday.

"Sometimes I will accompany the teams at random, sometimes NBR members will accompany them," he said.

The NBR chairman categorically warned the NBR officials not to harass anyone while conducting the survey. "If there is any allegation of corruption or bribery against any tax officials, we will expose them through the media and have them arrested under the Emergency [Powers] Act, and they will not get bail," Badiur Rahman said.

Promising that anyone accused of such charges will not be spared, he said the administration is now free of political interferences and therefore the whole task should be easy for both the tax officials and the taxpayers.

The sectors to be covered in the NBR survey are: 1. clinics and diagnostic centres, 2. community centres, residential hotels and restaurants, Chinese restaurants and fast food shops, sweetmeat, bakery and confectionery shops, 3. commercially run English/Bangla medium schools and coaching centres, 4. internet and computer centres, 5. beauty parlours, fitness centres and physiotherapy centres, 6. firms of lawyers, physicians, engineers, tax lawyers, chartered accountants, cost and management accountants, and architects, 7. book stalls, book binding shops, printing presses, travel agencies, and advertising firms, 8. machinery shops, grocery shops, general stores, retail shops, and department stores, 9. shopping malls and super markets, 10. thread producers, thread dying, finishing, coning and weaving houses, textiles manufactures, 11. real estate companies and developers, 12. saw mills, rice mills, flour mills, oil mills, and timber traders, 13. tailoring, laundry and sanitary ware shops, and 14. phone-fax and laminating centres, cassette-CD shops etc.

"The tax officials will visit these places and talk to the owners of these establishments. They will be given particular forms to fill in. If someone refuses to fill in the forms, they will not be pressurised," the NBR chairman said.