Daily Times

‘Luxury’, such a simple word with such a simple meaning: the state of great comfort, extravagant living, a condition of abundance or great ease, a sumptuous environment, something adding to pleasure or comfort but not absolutely necessary. Yet we all define luxury in our own way. For some the word may entail having the option not to work for a living, without having to worry about putting food on the table, paying the children’s tuition fees, or fretting about an empty fuel tank, or being able to afford two decent holidays locally if not abroad without a slash in the pay cheque, or to be able to buy essential commodities without looking at the price tag, or being immune from the fear of credit limit having been crossed, or worrying about depleting the meagre savings account on a medical emergency. For a large majority it may simply mean having three square meals a day, new clothes on two festive occasions and a simple brick house without a leaky roof to live in and perhaps owning a rechargeable fan. Yet for a concentrated wealthy few the word is a synonym for ‘necessity’!

In a recent report, Oxfam has claimed that the extreme poverty in the world can be eradicated four times over just by utilising the $ 240 billion net income of the richest hundred billionaires! It is reported that in the last 20 years the world’s richest one percent, despite the financial crisis, has managed to increase its income by 60 percent. Extreme wealth and inequality are reaching levels never before seen and are getting worse, both being economically inefficient, politically corrosive, socially divisive, environmentally destructive and unethical, but not inevitable. The political corroding power generated by extreme wealth is described as one that can be “exercised legally with hundreds of millions spent each year in many countries on lobbying politicians or illegitimately with money used to corrupt the political process and purchase democratic decision making.”

An article published in The Economist in 2009 stated: “Over half of the global population consisted of what is called the ‘middle class.’ The main factor that differentiates this class from the poor was having a reasonable amount of discretionary income, where people had roughly a third of their income left for discretionary spending after paying for basic food and shelter, allowing people to buy consumer goods, improve their healthcare, and provide for their children’s education.”

One measure suggested for tax collection in the federal budget this year is the levy of ‘advance tax’ on education to be paid by the parent or guardian and chargeable in the fee voucher or challan on an annual basis up to Rs 200,000. One of the distinct features of the middle class is that it is highly educated and consists of professionals, managers, senior civil servants, white collar workers, etc, who focus all their resources on ‘education’. Provision of education, incidentally, and free and compulsory at that, is the constitutional responsibility of the state. Instead of putting a slab on the maximum fee that can be charged at an institution, and instead of providing state schools that impart education at par with the private ones, the government is planning to penalise the parents for educating their children, for wanting their children to have a chance in life. As a young girl, when my father, a civil servant, was posted to London, I went to a comprehensive school, not a private one, but it was free and the level of teaching and quality of education including provision of free books was remarkable. Is our government offering such facilities anywhere in Pakistan? The proposed law does not mention whether this tax will be levied in government institutions. My daughter studies at a federal university, so will I and other parents have to pay a tax on the fee set by the government itself?

The Punjab government in its proposed finance bill has announced the levy of a ‘luxury tax’. “In order to tax luxurious lifestyle” — not defined — it plans to charge a ‘luxury tax on urban area A category houses measuring two kanals and above.” The proposal involves a one-time tax, to the tune of Rs 500,000 for a two-kanal house, Rs 1,000,000 for four kanals, and not so surprisingly, despite the assertion that “tax liability will increase with increase in size”, a maximum limit of Rs 1,500,000 has been set for houses of eight kanals and above! I have never been a genius in math, but even to a dud like me it is apparent that following an equitable and non-discriminatory principal, the tax for a six-kanal house should be Rs.1,500,000, and for eight kanals Rs 20,000,000 and so forth for each increase. Why is relief being given to the extremely wealthy instead of the middle class who are already in the tax net? Two-kanal houses are mostly owned by the middle class, and most of them were constructed over three, four or even five decades ago. With plenty of senior citizens living in them, built with hardships or life savings, or with bank loans, or by selling off agricultural land to buy urban land when it was cheap, most of these houses have a ‘middle-class’ look, nothing remotely ‘luxurious’, where the inhabitants struggle to maintain a decent standard of living. The imposition of a luxury tax, without considering the class to which a building belonged, the nature of construction, the purpose for which it was used, its situation and its capacity for profitable use is discriminatory, but please, by all means tax the middle-class for living; after all, this class is perhaps the only class paying taxes! But it is good to know that huge houses in Lahore along the canal, on the Main Boulevard Gulberg, FCC, Green Fort, Bahria Town, Model Town and elsewhere will get off with peanuts to pay! While an average middle class person pays Rs 500,000 from a discretionary income that he or she no longer has, owners of the 200-kanal, bomb-proof palace, worth over Rs five billion, in Bahria Town will either be exempt from category A or will just have to pay Rs 1,500,000 towards the tax liability and the same will be the case with the owners of the Dubai Palace! If the government plans to charge Rs 500,000 for two kanals, that establishes the tax rate at Rs 250,000 per kanal. Why should the ‘luxury tax’ not be levied at this rate per kanal across the board? And why only on ‘urban’ luxurious lifestyles?

Pakistan finally has a government that is, as put by its office-bearers, ‘without crutches’. To an ordinary person like me, being ‘crutch-less’ signifies the ability of being able to walk, run, dance, swim, skate or whatever unaided. It points to an absence of any handicap and to being able to move without any physical support from anyone or anything. This is indeed a good omen, for it shows that this government has the ability and power to accomplish any task without any outside help. The people voted for this government and for the representatives sitting in the National and provincial Assemblies, but whose interests are they supposed to protect and whose will are they supposed to exercise? Why is concentration of wealth permissible? Why are the wealthy and extreme wealth entitled to discriminatory concessions? Do those sitting in the corridors of powers belong to this category? Could the goal be to make the middle-class ‘crutch-free’ but still give them the ‘luxury’ to lie on a ‘stretcher’ and pay penance for voting?

The writer is an advocate of the High Court