Tax evasion?: Axact CEO paid Rs26 in income tax

Report says Shoaib’s total declared annual income was just Rs400,520

Following the May 18 earth-shattering report on the global operations of Axact in The New York Times, Atlantic Media group’s digital publication Quartz on Tuesday took a deeper look at the company’s CEO and founder Shoaib Ahmed Shaikh.

The man who wanted to be “richer than Bill Gates” and whose company claims to have a presence in “six continents, 120 countries and 1,300 cities” paid only Rs26 in income tax in 2014, a fact first made public by journalist Ahmed Noorani in mid-April, the report says.

Based on the lowest individual tax rate in Pakistan, Shaikh’s total declared annual income was just Rs400,520, or a little over Rs33,377 a month.

The Quartz report found that Axact was only registered in June 2006, according to the records of the Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan (SECP), and only had paid up capital of Rs6 million, according to the 2010 records of the Security and Exchange Commission of Pakistan.

During the last financial year, Axact paid a little above Rs1.8 million in corporate tax, according to FBR, putting the company’s earnings a little over Rs5.5 million (at a 34% corporate tax rate).

Published in The Express Tribune, May 20^th, 2015.