This one move will be persistent pursuance of policy by every successive government that has misruled this country
LAHORE: This refers to the real estate taxation proposal’s withdrawal and reports by your newspaper. It takes a fickle federal budget and its equally fickle authors, who are consistent in their practice of withdrawing every taxation proposal within weeks of its announcement, to achieve such feats.
Can anybody visualise losses to the criminal black economy, cutting off funding to terrorists and extremists and curbing investments in the Gulf real estate if our economy is documented and everybody starts paying taxes? The latest decision not to impose a nominal ten per cent tax on actual profits earned by real estate investors who sell their property within five years of acquiring it will boost the black economy and promote corruption. It seems the whole world, which imposes such taxes on real estate profits, is wrong, including the United Kingdom, the US or Canada, the favourite safe havens of our ruling elite.
This one move will be persistent pursuance of policy by every successive government that has misruled this country to ensure that the Quaid-e-Azam’s directive to deal an iron hand towards the curse of corruption, bribery, hoarding and black marketing never succeeds. It will force thousands of yet honest professionals and hardworking state employees to resort to corruption if they are to fulfil every individual’s basic dream to own a house, which they cannot afford to do unless they shun integrity and stop paying taxes regularly.
As for the powerful paid bureaucracy of this country — whose appetite and greed for allotment of subsidised plots, unlimited perks, fleets of imported luxury limousines, and membership of elite clubs cannot be restrained — more foreign debts will be taken because they are unwilling to pay nominal taxes on bountiful of profits they make on prime real estate allotted to them for doing nothing more than what they were employed to do. This decision will give incentive and fuel to a declared policy of putting wheels on files by the powerful land mafia that defiantly occupies state and private land to sell to citizens of this country. It will facilitate money laundering and boost the black economy. Pakistan really does not need external enemies to harm this country, when more harm can be inflicted from within.
Tariq Ali
Published in The Express Tribune, July 27th, 2016.
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