Pakistan is a country ideal for profiteering and pilfering, but not worthy to live in
LAHORE: The consistency and commitment of the current government and its predecessors in protecting the black economy would surely be appreciated by those for whom the investment climate must be discouraged and collecting taxes is considered almost a sin. When the finance minister announced that a capital value tax will be levied on actual profits incurred from sale of real estate, which is sold within five years of its acquirement by an investor, it gave birth to hope that finally this government may have realised that this seven-trillion-rupee industry, which pays a meagre four billion rupees in indirect taxes, must be made to pay its due share, as is practised in every responsible country.
If this budgetary taxation plan were to be implemented, it would encourage investors to invest in industry, boost the documented economy, promote employment, and perhaps bring down the spiraling debt-to-GDP ratio in a country where external debts in the past three years have increased by an all-time high of $21 billion, most of it to boost our foreign exchange reserves.
What else could be expected from the wizards of the Federal Board of Revenue and the duo of its two political masters, one whose immediate family has shifted all their assets to the Gulf and beyond, and the other scion of a khaki, who midwifed a culture of criminal terrorism during the Afghan war under Ziaul Haq? It seems to be the goal of every government that the Quaid-e-Azam’s legacy of a modern democratic welfare state where the curses of bribery and corruption were to be dealt with an iron hand, must be defeated and not allowed to nurture. By withdrawing the capital value tax on actual profits on the sale of real estate evaluated at market price, the federal government has yielded to the pressures of dons and mafias for whom Pakistan is a country ideal for profiteering and pilfering, but not worthy to either live in, or for investment in job-creating industries and promoting a culture of taxation. The move will encourage land grabbers who openly claim to put wheels on files and deprive this country of its agricultural green belts, forests, hills and mangroves.
M T Ali
Published in The Express Tribune, July 24th, 2016.
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