A new tax in offing

KARACHI: With reference to the debate for and against the implementation of VAT in your pages, may I say that the issue is not about the tax itself but of the corruption inherent in our tax collection machinery.

For instance, there is major under-invoicing done by importers in Pakistan but this is usually not detected by customs and nothing is done about it. The idea should be to tax all sectors — trade, manufacturing, agriculture and services — progressively and not single out certain ones and leave out others.

Published in the Express Tribune, May 15th, 2010.