- Weakness in government policies and revenue collection machinery
Considering our society’s disdainful rejection of a serious tax culture, American humourist Mark Twain’s clichéd remark ‘nothing is certain except death and taxes’ needs a bit of local colour and twist: nothing is certain except growing number of failed amnesty schemes and falling number of taxpayers. That, and pervasive withholding taxes, an obsession with shoring up always depleted forex reserves by wanton commercial borrowing, a remedy worse than the disease, just about sums up the vision (clouded) and approach (mindless) of our financial experts towards tax collection and the economy. 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.
And the truth cannot be hid, as FBR data released on Tuesday, reveals the shocking fact that, in a survey of 36 sectors, apart from the ‘captive’ salaried class and the one termed as ‘others’, the remaining categories contain lesser number of taxpayers in 2017 than in 2013. 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. The salaried class income tax return filers increased 96 percent to 436,812 in 2017 from 242,153 in 2013, but the big picture is dismal indeed: total filers (1.238 million in 2017 and 1.391m in 2016), auto sector (1,479 filers in 2017, 1,796 in 2013), textiles (8,159 in 2017, 10,052 in 2013), construction (885 and 1,140), chemicals (1,104 and 1,302), leather (983 and 1,188), insurance (649 and 828), banking(98 and 115),sugar (surprisingly!) (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.
