53 MPs, including four ministers, did not pay a single penny

ISLAMABAD: At least four federal ministers and ministers of state did not pay a single penny in tax according to the MPs’ tax directory released by the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) on Friday. They are Zartaj Gul Wazir, Faisal Vawda, Sahibzada Mehboob Sultan and Shabbir Ali. The directory covered the financial year ending June 30, 2018 and has been tabulated from returns filed manually and electronically until September 14, 2020.

A total of 53 senators and members of the National Assembly (MNAs) paid no tax during this period. Ms. Zobeda Jalal’s name is conspicuous by its absence in the directory. Among the 27 federal ministers and four ministers of state, Senator Dr. Farogh Naseem was the highest taxpayer. He paid a sum of Rs35,135,459 as tax.

The FBR clarified that certain MPs have shared income as members of associations of persons (AoPs). Since, the AoPs pay tax as a separate entity, such a share is not taxable for individual members, it said.

So how much tax did prominent members of the federal cabinet pay? Ghulam Sarwar Khan paid Rs1,046,669; Murad Saeed Rs 374,728; Pervez Khattak Rs1,826,899; Makhdoom Khusro Bakhtiar Rs624,292; Shafqat Mahmood Rs231,730; Shah Mahmood Qureshi Rs183,900; Tariq Bashir Cheema Rs 314,840; Dr. Shireen Mazari Rs2,435,650; Hammad Azhar Rs22,445 (and Rs59,421,700 for AoP); Syed Shibli Faraz Rs367,460; Syed Aminul Haq Rs 66,749; Brig. (retd) Ijaz Ahmad Shah Rs58,120; Dr. Fehmida Mirza Rs187,052; Ali Amin Khan Gandapur Rs378,763; Ali Haider Zaidi Rs896,191; Azam Swati Rs590,916; Syed Fakhar Imam Rs5,212,137; Asad Umar Rs5,346,342; Omar Ayub Rs26,055,517; Muhammad Mian Soomro Rs38,022; Sheikh Rashid Ahmed Rs579,011; Fawad Chaudhry Rs1,698,651 (and Rs75,000 as AoP); Shehryar Afridi Rs183,900; Ali Muhammad Khan Rs430,695 and Noorul Haq Qadri Rs3,506,009 as AoP.

There are three senators - Shamim Afridi, Faisal Javed and Rana Maqbool Ahmad - who did not pay any tax during this period.

The MNAs falling in the category of zero taxpayers include Muhammad Sajjad, Bashir Khan, Malik Anwar Taj, Zahid Akram Durrani, Jawad Hussain, Mohsin Dawar, Abdul Shakoor, Aamer Mehmood Miani, Mansoor Hayat Khan, Syed Faizul Hassan, Chaudhry Zulfiqar Ali Bhindar, Malik Muhammad Ehsanullah Tiwana, Muhammad Sanaullah Khan Masti Khel, Nawab Sher, Ali Gohar Khan, Sahibzada Muhammad Mehboob Sultan, Muhammad Ameer Sultan, Muhammad Afzal, Saad Waseem, Ahmad Raza Maneka, Rana Iradat Sharif Khan, Rai Muhammad Murtaza Iqbal, Zahoor Hussain Qureshi, Makhdoom Sain Hussain Qureshi, Muhammad Ibrahim Khan, Choudhary Faqir Ahmad, Noorul Hassan Tanvir, Syed Mobeen Ahmed, Muhammad Shabbir Ali, Raza Rabani Khar, Makhdom Zada Sayed Basit Ahmad Sultan, Niaz Ahmed Jakhar, Khawja Sheraz Mehmood, Naveed Dero, Irfan Ali Laghari, Jamil Ahmed Khan, Agha Hassan Baloch, Syed Mehmood Shah, Mohammad Aslam Bhootani, Asma Hadeed, Aliya Hamza Malik, Seemi Bokhari, Rubina Jamil, Fauzia Behram, Rukhsana Naveed, Naz Baloch, Shamim Ara Panhwar, Syma Nadeem, and Nusrat Wahid.

There are four MNAs and one senator who paid less than one thousand rupees as tax. They are Tahir Sadiq (Rs214); Zulfiqar Bachani (Rs388); Ataullah (Rs 517), Ms. Kanwal Shauzab (Rs165) and Senator Mirza Muhammad Afridi (Rs910).

As AoP, the tax share of Sher Ali Arbab was Rs1,151,080; of Sheikh Rashid Shafique Rs3,320,006; of Hussain Elahi Rs251,508; Mian Muhammad Shafiq Rs307,931 and of Noreen Farooq Khan Rs126,146.

The FBR stated that it published the first tax directory of MPs in the tax year 2013. Issuing the current directory is a continuation of that initiative. The FBR said that public access to information is an important milestone in ensuring the transparency of the tax system which is also a major pillar of the reform agenda of the government.