This is apropos a Business Recorder op-ed ‘Resilience, helplessness or loss of trust?’ carried by the newspaper in two parts on Thursday and Friday. The writer, Syed Shabbar Zaidi, is a veteran tax expert. His expertise in this area, in my view, is beyond doubt or reproach, so to speak.
Alluding to what the learned writer has said about country’s taxation, I would like to add to his argument by saying that ours is a culture of tax evasion. That we have a culture of defeat as well is also a fact.
Our entire taxation system is skewed in favour of the rich completely and thoroughly; it’s hugely anti-poor and anti-middle classes. Successive governments have failed to widen the tax net owing to a variety of factors, including a woeful lack of political will.
The writer couldn’t do in his stints as the chairman of country’s taxation machinery, the Federal Bureau of Revenue (FBR), during the early phase of the previous government. In my view, he failed to deliver in the real sense of the word mainly owing to political corruption that characterizes our entire governance and societal landscape.
A very low tax to GDP ratio is one of the principal reasons behind country’s economic or fiscal woes. Unfortunately, however, there has been no drive or campaign by civil society or political parties against unfair taxation.
Little do our rulers realize that unjust tax is the hallmark of oppressors and aggressors. Israel, for example, imposes hugely unjust taxes on the Syrian Arabs and charges exorbitantly high fees for care at medical centres in the Golan Heights it has been illegally occupying since the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.
Umar Farooq (Karachi)
Copyright Business Recorder, 2023
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