The topic may suggest that I am facing a physically challenging time. That is not so. What’s fast approaching is the time to pay taxes at the end of the financial year. And that time is both hard and taxing for those who pay their income and other taxes according to the rules.
TAX SEASON
The topic may suggest that I am facing a physically challenging time. That is not so. What’s fast approaching is the time to pay taxes at the end of the financial year. And that time is both hard and taxing for those who pay their income and other taxes according to the rules.
The World Bank termed our tax system ‘unfair and absurd’ since about five million people file their tax returns out of the population of 240 million. The percentage of tax filers is embarrassingly low: about two per cent.
Every government grumbles that people do not pay their taxes, the tax base is narrow, and no one willingly part with money owed to the state. Without tax collection, the government cannot manage its myriad functions in the public interest. Not to forget, when prices of basic utilities are arbitrarily hiked, everybody is taxed. The taxpayers rightfully object that their tax money is not utilized in the right direction; instead, it is squandered away on wasteful pursuits.
For instance, how would the taxpayers react to the recent headline in this newspaper: ‘23 SOEs drained Rs5.5tr in a decade, NA panel told’? Why did the governments ignore the SOEs going into a loss and blatantly drain public tax money for a decade? PIA alone lost Rs700 billion during this period, as told in the National Assembly. But the NA members would hardly care as long as their salaries are increased from Rs180,000 to Rs519,000. The elected representatives cost the poor nation hundreds of millions every month.
Mysteriously, the Pakistan Steel Mills is not talked about as much as its loss-making partner, PIA. Even though the airline has been operating in an unsatisfactory manner, the PSL has remained out of commission since June 2015. Its employees received salaries regularly. At some stage, Russia and China wanted to take over the mills but the government didn’t agree to the proposal. By letting either of the countries take over the mills, its wheels would have started churning and producing steel. Why didn’t the government part with the mills? The public would like to know the wisdom behind this.
Arguably, what if Pakistan Steel was in the private sector? Its owner would have dumped it soon after it went into staggering losses. But with public tax money, the mills have survived for ten years, 2015-2025, without producing steel for the nation. This is not to say that many steel mills in the private sector are operating profitably.
Reportedly, taxpayers’ complaints against the FBR have surged 550 per cent in the last four months. To top it, the government now plans to post tax officers in large manufacturing sites
Another serious problem facing the nation is its large civil bureaucracy and burgeoning lifestyle. It is the opposite of the dictum ‘small government rules best’. When the administrative officers multiply in number, the requirements for salaries, residential and traveling facilities increase manifold. The caretaker Punjab government released a huge sum of Rs2.34 billion to purchase new luxury vehicles for the assistant commissioners, additional commissioners and commissioners. All assistant commissioners were to be given double cabins to perform their field duties.
In March last year, the prime minister approved recommendations by the Committee on Restructuring and Rightsizing to merge 82 departments and SOEs and convert them into 40 institutions. This was to be achieved by ‘smart management, efficient governance, transparency and swift implementation to provide better facilities to the common man’. More than a year later, it is for people to judge how much the dream has been realised.
It’s a misnomer to call the bureaucrats in our country civil servants; they’re in fact the rulers. Compare their lifestyle and performance of administrative duties with their counterparts in civil service in, say, Singapore. That country made tremendous all-around progress in the last few years, with its forex reserves going up to billions of dollars, while we merely survived economically. There was a time when Singapore and Pakistan were equally underdeveloped. Singapore made a meteoric rise in the region when its prime minister Lee Kwan Yew strictly promoted meritocracy and anti-corruption in government departments. No politically linked brother or cousin could get a government job without merit, unlike in our land where families and their offshoots rule.
Reportedly, taxpayers’ complaints against the FBR have surged 550 per cent in the last four months. To top it, the government now plans to post tax officers in large manufacturing sites. However, taxpayers must understand it’s taxing time -- about which Mark Twain defined the difference between a tax collector and a taxidermist: A taxidermist only takes the skin.
The writer is a freelance contributor. He can be reached at: pinecity@gmail.com
