2002: A year of distress & hope
Sweeping legal changesDr. Ikramul Haq[*]During 2002 Pakistan witnessed an avalanche of legal changes in various laws including the 1973 constitution, through innumerable Presidential Ordinances, aimed at ensuring “continuity” of Musharraf’s rule and policies. These changes — positive or negative, justified…
Kids—potential adults
Huzaima Bukhari“It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men”—Frederick Douglass, American social reformer, abolitionist, orator, writer and statesman.Nelson Mandela was so right when he opined that there could be no keener revelation of a society’s soul…
Taxes for prosper Pakistan
Dr. Ikramul Haq“The Laffer Curve, by the way, was not invented by me; it has its origins way back in time. For example, the Muslim philosopher Ibn Khaldun wrote in his fourteenth-century work The Muqaddimah: It should be known that…
Fixing the ailing tax system
Huzaima Bukhari & Dr. Ikramul HaqOn February 22, 2019, the Government of Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) published two tax directories—‘Parliamentarians Tax Directory’and ‘Tax Directory for the year ending 30 June 2017’ (these have been tabulated from returns filed manually and electronically till…
Optimizing tax collection
Huzaima Bukhari & Dr. Ikramul Haq“If we realise that the FBR cannot be fixed, we will create a new FBR. This is because Pakistan’s survival is linked to it. It’s not about our liking or disliking: if our tax collection…
Equality in inequality!
Huzaima Bukhari“The worst form of inequality is to try to make unequal things equal”—AristotleWith the introduction of biometric verification whereby a person can be uniquely identified by evaluating one or more distinguishing biological traits, including fingerprints, hand and earlobe geometry,…
Fundamental tax reforms
Dr. Ikramul Haq“If we realise that the FBR cannot be fixed, we will create a new FBR. This is because Pakistan’s survival is linked to it. It’s not about our liking or disliking: if our tax collection authority does not…
Unconstitutional taxation
Dr. Ikramul HaqThe National Assembly, through Finance Act 2012, amended section 37(5) of the Income Tax Ordinance, 2001 and for the first time levied income tax on capital gain of immovable property. Punjab levied a similar tax in Finance Act…
Taxation: Institutional Reforms
Huzaima Bukhari & Dr. Ikramul HaqAll efforts in the name of tax reforms undertaken in Pakistan till today have miserably failed. These were nothing but mere patchwork here and there. Institutional reforms based on restructuring and redesigning of tax system…