National Assembly: Opposition assails govt over tax regime

Budget debate in the lower house focuses on rhetoric against the elite.

ISLAMABAD:

The opposition, mainly led by the PML-N, criticised the government on Saturday over multiple accounts, ranging from faulty tax regime, inflation, deteriorating law and order situation, irrational government borrowing to the government’s failure to tax the rich.

Shahid Khaqan Abbasi of the PML-N, while speaking on the budget in the National Assembly, demanded that everyone, including “generals, judges and parliamentarians” ought to pay their taxes.

Noting that almost one-thirds of parliamentarians were not paying taxes, he lambasted the Federal Bureau of Revenue (FBR) for failing to tax the rich.

“Just Rs10 million were being collected from (all) parliamentarians in taxes. The finance minister should explain why more loans were being taken without improving FBR’s performance,” said Abbasi.

He said that because of failed economic policies and excessive borrowings, Pakistan’s foreign debt had climbed to Rs10 trillion on which “we will have to pay Rs100 billion extra in interest next year”.

Sharing statisitics on tax evasion and theft, Abbasi claimed that more than 50 per cent of the two million people earning Rs500,000 a month were evading taxes, while 50 million people whose monthly income was not more than Rs3,000 a month were being taxed.



Published in The Express Tribune, June 12th, 2011.