US debt- ceiling deal dooms Biden’s revolutionary tax plans
US President Joe Biden’s 2020 campaign promise to make wealthy Americans and corporations pay more in taxes to finance a range of social priorities breathed its last gasp, at least…
IMF, Constitution & tax codes
“The International Monetary Fund (IMF) on Monday urged Pakistan to follow the Constitution in order to resolve its political disputes, as Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif contacted Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva…
Tax on undistributed reserves
This is not the first time that there is a proposal to tax undistributed reserves of a company. Such imposition has been attempted at least twice before under sections 12(9A)…
Paradigm shift in tax policy
‘The impact of economic growth on the lives of people is partly a matter of income distribution, but it also depends greatly on the use that is made of the…
Budget, taxes, revival & growth
Fiscal consolidation should be as growth-friendly as possible. In general, tax base-broadening reforms are identified as growth-oriented reforms. To the extent that they reduce distortions to economic decisions on work,…
No taxation without representation
Learned Justice Munib Akhtar’s long order elaborating the court’s interpretation of Article 63-A argued that “the real problem is not the sullying of the ranks of a party by the…
Taxation and inflation
The Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) has claimed collection of net revenue of Rs4,493 billion in the first eight months of the current financial year against Rs3,820 billion collected in…
Why do all roads lead to more taxes?
As a staff-level agreement between IMF (International Monetary Fund) and Pakistan following the ninth review of the IMF programme inches ever closer, the government recently announced the Supplementary Finance Bill,…
BBC tax raids put India press freedom in spotlight
Just weeks after the BBC aired a documentary examining Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s role in deadly 2002 sectarian riots, tax inspectors descended on the broadcaster’s offices. Modi’s Hindu nationalist…
Taxation of immovable property
The National Assembly through the Finance Act 2012 amended section 37(5) of the Income Tax Ordinance, 2001 [“the Ordinance”] and for the first time levied capital gains tax (CGT) on…
