With such a lackadaisical government attitude and the business/trading community’s aversion to taxation, the country’s overall finances remain in dire straits, while in the tax-filers versus non-filers competition, the latter easily trounce the former by a fair margin. As happens every year, the Federal Board of Revenue’s public credibility is further eroded, with its apologetic air of failure on being unable to meet the set targets yet again. This is a sombre statistic, which gives the lie to the governments’, any random governments’, oft-expressed earnest vow of broadening the tax base, and indeed is responsible for the country lagging behind in public sector infrastructure and stagnant state of the social sector. (104 filers in 2017 and 186 in 2013), and so on down this sliding slope. Without achieving maximum revenue potential, development plans cannot be implemented, which breeds poverty, backwardness, disparity and mass social discontent.

Source: Pakistan Today February 23, 2018 06:22 UTC