Final destination of the taxpayer’s money

A look into the authorities and their spending transparency

KARACHI: How many times have we wondered where the billions collected as tax revenues go? I think we need to keep wondering or arrive at our own unsavoury conclusions of lined pockets, wasted infrastructure, low-need construction projects and imaginary beneficiaries. Accountability does not seem to come naturally to many.

Here is an anecdote for the curious: prompted by an-anonymity-preferring film actor, the president of Pakistan wrote a Rs1 million cheque to an ailing film actress. No one said from whose money.

Given her persisting afflictions, the Punjab government was questioned about their efforts for her welfare. Actress-turned-politician Kanwal Nauman assured that the schizophrenic artist has already been receiving Rs25,000 per month from the Punjab government, via an Artists Welfare Fund. This, was after Pervaiz Elahi announced Rs0.5 million in assistance – no doubt from the Punjab taxpayers coffers.

The same yardstick for all

With deep apologies for what may erroneously come across as insensitivity: this is not about any one particular artist at all. It is about applying this same sensitivity towards all of a government’s constituents. Why three separate, significant, support lines to one relatively-wealthy, if ailing woman?

Her illness is one that deserves attention, and support. Why not award this Rs1 million to all schizophrenic patients in Pakistan? Many do not even have a home.

Why not award the Rs25,000 to all retired people, across the board, throughout the country? There are no such defined criteria or transparencies with these donations.

The government of Pakistan is responsible for all 182 million alike. How is this liberty justifiable in a state where 60% live under the $2-a-day poverty line (according to the Economic Survey). Whether in relative or absolute terms, justification for such gestures eludes the mind.

The cyclical effect of unaccountability

The compounded irony is that despite all the support, this particular beneficiary is still quite ill: a tragic condition, no doubt.

It seems only logical though that unaccountability would beget unaccountability: no one has answers for where all the money she is bequeathed goes since she is not getting the necessary treatment she was receiving before. There are only few answers for what really happens with our national income

Misfortune can befall any once-successful professional. If we have an Artists Welfare Fund, why not also a fund for the businessmen, doctors or engineers.

Last we checked Pakistan was no welfare state – by policy or by personality. The people are an enterprise, dignified and unafraid of hard-work. The ones that really could use a helping hand from the half-a-trillion tax pool would rather stand on their own feet – preferring the dignity that comes only with making one’s own living.

Inspiring leaders throughout history have earned their own living: Aurangzeb preferred to sow caps than to take from government funds.

The Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) collected Rs421 billion in fiscal year 2013-14. That’s a twelve-digit figure: almost half a trillion rupees. Out of which 46% came from the two regional tax offices in Karachi. And, there’s much more to be collected from the nation’s high-net-worth tax evaders.

But even if the already-amassed tax revenues alone were honestly, transparently invested, imagine the differences we would have seen.

Selective efficiencies

Always put on the defensive, the FBR would like to share that all offices’ expenditure was only 0.68% of the total tax collection, which they say, makes us amongst the most efficient of nations in the department of tax collection: South Africa, for instance, has a tax collection cost of 1.1%, while Malaysia receives 1.4% and Singapore’s revenue collection agency gets 5% of tax collection as expenditure.

If there was a similar robustness in the efficiency of the tax investment, as well as collection, we would likely be a different picture altogether.

THE WRITER IS A JOURNALIST AND ALSO A SUSTAINABILITY CONSULTANT, HAVING WRITTEN MANY ARTICLES, CORPORATE REPORTS AND STRATEGIES

Published in The Express Tribune, May 25^th,  2015.

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