The state would save billions in administrative cost by outsourcing tax collection.
LAHORE: This is with reference to the finance minister’s post-budget briefing and reports published in the media. It is shocking to note that his government expects over 1,200 tax collectors to perform the duty of tax collection honestly when these officers themselves have not filed mandatory tax returns. The penalty that the finance minister proposes for such criminals is that their allowances will be stopped effectively by June 10, 2014. One wonders if the suggested punishment is mere empty words once again, or it will actually be implemented.
In any other country, such persons would be behind bars, their properties confiscated and under no circumstances would they have been allowed to continue with serving on the job. Such half-hearted, not to mention delayed, measures expose an acceptance of the tax evasion culture, not just by the elected government but by the bureaucracy of this country. As per reports published in the media, tax evasion has caused losses of up to 1.2 trillion rupees.
Tax evasion is as heinous a crime as murder or rape because the very structure on which a government is based and paraphernalia necessary for administration, such as policing and maintenance of law and order and delivery of justice, stands eroded as a result of tax evasion. Retaining these criminal tax defaulters at their assignments is just like allowing policemen with known criminal record to run police stations. Given the nexus between tax evaders and tax officers, the state would save billions in administrative cost by outsourcing tax collection with guaranteed targets set at double the tax collected in previous years. As for the budget, can the finance minister justify the levying of a nominal tax ranging from one per cent to two per cent on the staggering amounts of profit from single transactions earned by individuals in the lucrative real estate business, or exemptions given to massive earnings by stock exchange investors, when there is a paucity of funds for education, health and provision of clean drinking water to the millions deprived in the country.
Malik Tariq Ali
Published in The Express Tribune, June 6th, 2014.
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