139 MPs either tax defaulters or paid no tax

ISLAMABAD: At least 139 federal and provincial legislators including two federal ministers and a Sindh special assistant are either tax defaulters or did not pay even a single penny as income tax in 2015, according to the Tax Directory released by the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR).

Federal ministers Khurram Dastgir and Sardar Yusuf maintained their last year’s status of being tax defaulters as their names did not figure in the new directory as well.

Importantly, Owais Muzaffar a.k.a. Tappi, stepbrother of Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) chief and former President Asif Ali Zardari, paid no income tax at all in 2015.

Also, Special Assistant to the Sindh Chief Minister Sikandar Ali Shoro of the PPP is among those who paid no tax.

The MPs, who are tax defaulters or who paid no tax, belong to almost all parliamentary parties. The senators who paid not a single penny as tax include Gul Bushra and Usman Kakar of the Pakistan Pakhtunkhwa Milli Party (PMAP), Kulsoom Pervez and Naimatullah Zehri of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N), Samina Abid of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), Sitara Ayaz of the Awami National Party (ANP) and Nighat Mirza of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM).

From among the members of the National Assembly (MNAs) whose names appear in the tax directory, only Syed Basit Bokhari of the PML-N, elected from Muzaffargarh, was shown as having paid no tax.

The PTI MNAs from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP), who are tax defaulters, include Hamidul Haq Khalil elected from Peshawar, Siraj Muhammad Khan elected from Nowshera, Aqibullah elected from Swabi and Salim Rehman elected from Swat.

The PML-N MNAs are Babar Nawaz Khan, elected from Haripur, Sar Zamin Khan from Kohistan, and Muhammad Nazir Khan and Ghalib Khan from tribal areas.

Jamaluddin, elected from the tribal areas, hails from Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam-Fazl (JUI-F).

Bilal Rehman, Sajid Hussain Turi and Bismillah Khan were elected from the tribal areas as independents. The PML’s tax defaulter MNAs from Punjab are Raja Matloob Mehdi, recently elected from Jhelum, Sahibzada Nazeer Sultan (Jhang), Mumtaz Ahmad Tarar (Mandi Bahauddin), Waheed Alam Khan (Lahore), Chaudhry Riazul Haq (Okara), Rana Qasim Noon (Multan) and Alam Dad Laleka (Bahawalnagar).

The MQM’s tax defaulter lawmakers include Abdul Waseem, Muhammad Kamal Malik, Dr Khalid Maqbool Siddiqui and Kanwar Naveed. The PPP’s legislators are Shahjahan Baloch, Makhdoom Saeed-uz-Zaman.

According to last year’s tax directory, a total of 40 MNAs who were either zero tax payers or had not filed tax returns included 21 PML-N MNAs, eight from the PTI, four from the PPP, two from the MQM and of other smaller parties.

Jamshed Dasti, who had fallen in the category of non-taxpayers, paid Rs34,664 income tax this year.