May 16, 2016
President Pakistan Businessmen and Intellectuals Forum (PBIF), President AKIA, Senior Vice Chairman of the Businessmen Panel of FPCCI and former provincial minister Mian Zahid Hussain urged the government to introduce simplified tax regime in the upcoming budget.
Government should focus on direct taxation and introduce flat rate for as many sectors as to improve relationships between tax payers and tax collectors and enhance collections.
Pakistan had 1.6 million taxpayers in 2006 which has now been reduced to around one million that indicates lack of trust between tax payers and collectors which can be restored with little efforts, he said.
Mian Zahid Hussain said that low tax collection has impaired state’s ability to spend on social sector and equal distribution of wealth and it has become difficult for the government to raise revenue for its own expenditures.
He said that preference of indirect taxation over direct taxation has increased poverty and other social problems while it is helping the rich to enjoy without any obligations.
The veteran business leader said that there are fifty-eight kinds of withholding taxes of different natures imposed on masses with around five thousand tariff lines. Industrialists have to tackle fifty five different federal taxes and other provincial taxes, their compliance requires a lot of time which resultantly increase cost of doing business.
Out of total collections, seventy five percent of revenue is collected through indirect taxes, while 80 percent revenue of collections of direct taxes comes from WHT.
He said that flat rate will not reduce revenue but increase it and the government can start it in one area or with one sector to see the result of the experiment.
Some big companies are silently shifting burden of taxes on masses which must be noticed, he said adding that flaws in the taxation system has resulted in poverty as eighty individuals around the world have more wealth than half of the world’s poor.
