The taxation measures he spoke about sounded to ambitious.
KARACHI: The finance minister’s budget speech was more or less hot air. It sounded okay but didn’t amount to much. For instance, the minister said that Pakistan cannot afford to be extravagant and that austerity is needed to curtail expenditures, to reduce the fiscal deficit. So what stops the finance minister from ensuring that that happens?
He also spoke of taxation measures. For instance, he said around 2.3 million new taxpayers will be brought under the tax net. How is this going to be done, given that if this plan succeeds it will more than triple the number of taxpayers in Pakistan? Surely it sounds too ambitious, to say the least. Also, the minister said nothing on how the Federal Board of Revenue will change its years-old culture of bureaucratic inertia and complicity in tax evasion to all of a sudden go after evaders.
I am sure many people who heard his speech would have thought of these very questions.
Usman Qazi
Published in The Express Tribune, June 5th, 2011.
