The budget season has begun. Possibly one of the first in the series of annual pre-budget seminars was held earlier week. Called the National Tax Summit, the seminar was jointly organised by the SDPI and Oxfam Pakistan. But for those who already follow Pakistans economy - such as the readers of this column - the seminar offered little new to discuss, though of course for no fault of the organisers or the speakers. The fault lies in our stars.
As Dr Akmal Hussain pointed out at the summit, equity is the foundation principle of the state of Pakistan.
"The great ideals of human progress, of social justice, of equality and of fraternity..., constitute the basic causes of the birth of Pakistan," none other than Jinnah himself said this on March 28, 2014.
Akmal also chose to highlight Article 38(A) of Pakistans constitution that says: the state shall secure the well-being of the people, irrespective of sex, caste, creed or race, by raising their standard of living, by preventing the concentration of wealth and means of production and distribution in the hands of a few to the detriment of general interest and by ensuring equitable adjustment of rights between employers and employees, and landlords and tenants.
How could a society go from these founding principles of economy to one where majority of taxation is indirect, where tax laws are extremely complex, where corruption and rent seeking is the norm, where bulk of income - including agricultural income and income on services such as doctors, retailers, salons etc - remains untaxed or under taxed - and the list can go on; we all know about it, and that is why hardly anything is new at seminars like the one this week.
The point is everybody is swimming naked under the tide; well, almost everybody - which is a pretty gloomy picture. But now that the public clamouring has begun there is hope; or so we think. Then again, there is no hope in highlighting the same old issues over and over again at
number of conferences and seminars across Pakistan. Lets shake up the society a little bit.
Lets find ways to bring in the politicians - those point-one percent of the serious ones from each party and find champions within. Lets also start naming and shaming the top tax evaders from each business and economic segment of the society. Lets also bring in farmers, retailers, doctors, salon and parlour owners and the whole lot and ask them how long do they want to be out of the tax net. Lets publish data pertaining to each business sector and each city - in terms of the taxes they yield and the government spending they get. Lets also convince media bosses to forget chasing the ratings for once and have serious discourse on taxation and economics on TV. And lets have all this across Pakistan in the umpteen different languages that we speak.
The fault may lie in the stars; but the fate lies in our hands. Failure to take action now will only result in TARP after TARP, reform commissions after reform commissions, and summits after summits until the time when even gated residential schemes will not remain safe.
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