Daily Times

Sir: While addressing a seminar on “Interplay of Economy and security” in Karachi, Pakistan’s Chief of Army Staff (COAS) expressed concern over the country’s sky high debt and suggested enhancing the tax base in order to break the begging bowl. This increased tax base is crucial if we are to increase our national revenue. But more importantly, we have to curtail the massive amounts of tax evasion, misusage of tax exemption SROs, bogus and excess refunds and disposal of adjudicating tax cases as early as we can. Tax evasion can only be controlled by audits of all the registered tax payers. A huge tax amount is parked by top business companies. All registered persons should be audited. Secondly the improper use tax exemption SROs in sales and income tax causes huge revenue losses every month. This needs to stop.

Development projects alone wont save Pakistan’s economy. The issue of national debt needs to be given priority.

M. Muslim Sheikh

Larkana

Published in Daily Times, October 14^th 2017.