A Rs 250 purchase wins Rs 1 million prize

The government has announced the winners of its taxpayer incentive gift programme, with one participant winning a bumper prize of Rs 1 million.

At an event held at the Ministry of Finance on Friday, Finance Minister Dr Swarnim Wagle selected 15 winners and one bumper prize winner under the programme launched by the Inland Revenue Department.

The department said coupon number 007315254493 won the Rs 1 million bumper prize. 

The winning coupon was generated from a Rs 250 purchase made at Shiva Krishna General Store in Kanchanpur district.

Launching the programme, Minister Wagle said it would help promote a culture of issuing and receiving bills while supporting the expansion of the formal economy.

He said the programme, introduced through the current fiscal year’s budget, would also help 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,” Wagle said.

Under the programme, transactions made through digital payments are automatically recorded in the system. Wagle said transactions worth around Rs 25.6 million were recorded in the first phase, while more than Rs 7 billion in transactions have so far been brought into the system.

He expressed confidence that monthly transactions recorded through the system would reach billions of rupees in the coming days.

“The programme encourages taxpayers to use digital payment methods, issue and receive bills, and come under the tax net. It will help curb revenue leakage and expand the formal economy,” he said.

The government launched the Taxpayer Incentive Gift Programme to promote the practice of issuing and receiving VAT bills and improve transparency in economic transactions.

On the occasion, Inland Revenue Department Director General Bhishma Kumar Bhusal said the daily winners and the first fortnightly bumper prize winner for the period from Sawan 1 to 15 were selected through a computerised system.

According to Bhusal, the winners were selected using a “cryptographically secure uniform random sampling without replacement” method. The system ensures that every coupon has an equal chance of being selected, that the same coupon cannot be selected more than once in a single draw, and that the selection process remains fair and secure.