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.
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.