Real Estate: Real estate has also emerged to constitute a very significant sphere of economic activity during last two decades. Physical and immovable assets are estimated to contribute from 60% to 70% of the country’s wealth. This comes to an estimated worth of an unbelievable amount of $300 to 400 billion as reported by PIDE while quoting the World Bank. Despite the fact that real estate has huge revenue potential, this area has largely been untapped as the market rates of the properties are still quite high compared to the FBR-notified rates; also, the legislation regarding the taxation of capital gain has certain loopholes that allow tax leakage.
Sin Tax (FED): The government collects more than Rs200 billion from federal excise duty largely from cigarettes, beverages aerated water juices etc. The rate of duty on fizzy drinks and similar other items is still low, hence, this area can be tapped for more revenue. In certain Western countries, this is called Sin Tax as this is normally imposed on those food items that are considered hazardous to human health.
Informal Economy: Pakistan has been ranked very high in terms of developing countries with significant size and scale of the informal economy. Different indexes are employed to measure the informal economy such as the Schneider Index and the Heritage Foundation Index: one is for measuring the shadow economy and the other is used as an index of informal markets. A World Bank report observes that informality is driven by the scale of development, poverty, inequality and access to resources. It noted that widespread informality has long been associated with a whole host of development challenges. Most prominently, more widespread informality has been associated with significantly poorer governance and greater lags in achieving every dimension of the SDGs. Countries with larger informal sectors also tend to have less access to finance for the private sector, lower labour productivity, slower physical and human capital accumulation, and smaller fiscal resources.
Despite the fact that real estate has huge revenue potential, this area has largely been untapped.
Political attitudes also come to signify in this process of informality, as is suggested through the seminal work on comparative fiscal sociology, besides a host of other studies. Therefore, bringing the informal economy to the fold of formality invokes broader questions of critical nature involving relations of state, market and citizenship. The narrow scope of income tax compliance through a mix of legal and enforcement-related instruments doesn’t seem to bring any widespread and paradigmatic shifts in such vast domains of informality which had long capped growth of taxation in Pakistan. Needless to mention, despite much talk of the informal economy, this area remains untapped.
Agriculture Income Tax: The issue of provincial taxation brings to the core issue of agriculture tax. Statistics from the Punjab Revenue Board reveal that there are 9,363,388 farm owners in Punjab with the total cultivated area in acres aggregating to 19,607,509. Studies have shown that the extremely skewed distribution of agricultural farms allows for a progressive agricultural income tax. The top one percent of farm owners have as much as 22 percent of the farm area and the top 4 percent own 34 percent of the farm area. Leading economist, Hafiz Pasha has estimated the potential of agricultural income tax in Pakistan, four provinces included, to the amount of Rs. 105 billion, as 60 billion expected from Punjab alone.
Thus, there is a dire need for alteration to the regime of instruments which include different so-called untouchable areas of taxation such as VAT mode, wealth tax, capital gain tax, and sin tax etc. and rationalize and restructure all the tax exemptions under income tax, sales tax and customs which are largely being misused and have become breeding ground for elite and interest groups in the name of welfare and development. These exemptions and concessions have proved to be counterproductive and have given rise to rent rent-seeking culture in Pakistan. Even exemptions granted to charitable organizations educational institutions and hospitals have been misused.
These taxation themes/policy options ground its position on the principles of tax justice, progressivity, and equitability, putting the burden on the tax-ability of differentiated segments of society. It is also observed that these are easily implementable and require fewer structural shifts and promise high revenue bend in the short, medium and long term and are expected to yield dividends from those areas which should be taxed progressively (Concluded).
The writer works at a public policy think tank. He can be reached at saudzafar5@gmail.com.