Corona-crisis: A wake-up call?
Huzaima Bukhari “Death is the final wake-up call”—Douglas Horton Specialized training of income tax for probationary officers who qualified the Civil Services Competitive Examination of 1983, took place during 1985 and 1986. Yours faithfully was one of them. This is…
Covid-19 pandemic
Combatting & redefining future Dr. Ikramul Haq The worldwide Covid-19 crisis has jolted the entire humanity, exposed vulnerabilities of even those states considered as economically and politically so “powerful” so as to determine the course of history. Being clueless…
Demographic analysis: pragmatic use
Huzaima Bukhari “If you’re a scientist, and you have to have an answer, even in the absence of data, you’re not going to be a good scientist”—Neil deGrasse Tyson (American astrophysicist) Most organized households first make a note of their…
Covid19-pendamic, leadership & apathy
Huzaima Bukhari & Dr. Ikramul Haq In a country of about 210 million people, about 10,000 individuals, prominent in business or profession or holding key positions in state institutions, think they know each and everything and can fix the multiple…
Tax package for coronavirus economic toll
Learning from China & others Dr. Ikramul Haq Nobody in Pakistan has highlighted till today what China has offered as tax package to help domestic businesses hurt by the deadly corona outbreak in addition to overcoming it in a short…
Pakistan: case for external debts write-off
Huzaima Bukhari “Good debt accrues assets that generate positive returns and externalities”—Anthony Scaramucci—American political consultant Any logical person would advise someone looking for a break-through to “strike when the iron is hot”—the right (or rather ripe) time to realize an…
Relief & stimulus package
When challenges offer opportunities Huzaima Bukhari & Dr. Ikramul Haq “It is a narrow mind which cannot look at a subject from various points of view”— George Eliot, Middlemarch “Five percent of the people think; ten percent of the people…
Decades of (in)dependence
Huzaima Bukhari & Dr. Ikramul Haq After seven decades of independence, the rulers in Pakistan want to celebrate liberation from colonial rule having pushed the country into a chronic debt trap at the hands of neo-colonial forces. This paradox depicts…
NFC & fiscal consolidation
Huzaima Bukhari & Dr. Ikramul Haq In these columns, we have been repeatedly pleading for an urgent action to review the existing taxation rights under the Constitution of Islamic Republic of Pakistan [“the Constitution”] as presently, all broad-based and buoyant…