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,…
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) and Pakistani authorities have been unable to reach a staff-level agreement after a week-long discussions on 9th Review. Reportedly, Pakistan having broadly agreed to all…
The federal budget for fiscal year (FY) 2022-23 assigned an ambitious target of Rs. 7.470trillion to the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR), which includes both direct and indirect taxes. The…
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…
One of the pernicious side-effects of a large dose of the federal divisible tax pool injected into the provincial finances is that the provinces have become slack in mobilizing their…
Pakistan has one of the world’s lowest tax ratios, stemming from five main weaknesses: complexity, a narrow tax base, low compliance, inefficient tax administration, and low and declining provincial tax…
Studies on sectoral incidence show that industry bears more than two-thirds of the tax, while the services sector bears about 21 per cent and agriculture 3.0 per cent. In the…
Very few people outside the economics profession realize that fiscal (government revenue and expenditure) and current accounts (inflows and outflows of foreign exchange) are closely interlinked. A current account is…
The last financial year witnessed a record performance by the FBR (Federal Board of Revenue). Tax revenues increased by almost 30%. Consequently, the FBR tax-to-GDP ratio went up significantly from…
The continuously declining dismal share of income tax in overall tax collection during the last many years testifies to the lack of judicious balance between direct and indirect taxes, resulting…
