Supreme Court should supervise through Suo Motu action the enlargement of number of taxable persons brought by FBR in the tax net

            The touchstone of the efficacy of any Constitution promulgated, Award agreed upon or Package announced is not that it was passed either by Parliament, Provinces or any other Authority. The efficacy is that to what extent it was implemented in letter and spirit or how many of the individuals of the Country were benefited through it.

            In this Country, every Servant pays tax whose salary is above from a certain limit but a large number of persons are either not registered or are paying less tax as required by their annual income. The most important question is who should be entrusted to bring the names of those who are liable to taxed in the tax-net?

            At present, there are many departments who are collecting the taxes of various natures both at Federal and Provincial levels but the situation of tax collection is not satisfactory as it should be as the numbers of persons liable to be taxed are enjoying a sort of self-tax exemption.

            Factories, shopping plazas, markets, private colleges, schools and purchase of new cars are at rise but the payment of taxes has not reached to that level which is required.

            The Motor Registration Authorities in every District of the Country should provide the FBR with updated record of the names of the owners of Cars and other vehicles and should also be assigned the job of ascertaining from the owners whether they have NTN from the FBR?

            The Head Master/Principal of every High and Higher Secondary School should send directly to the FBR Catalogues of markets, Factories, shopping plazas and names of every person who is in possession of Cars or other vehicles through which they earn annually taxable amount. Apart from this, he should also send the names of the private schools and colleges in the area of his school. I have named the Head Master or Principal for this reason that he would ask the students of his school to bring the names of those persons who are the owners/sharers of these taxable assets. Further scrutiny is the job of the FBR to investigate in detail the names of the taxable persons. The job of the Head Master or Principal is to provide a preliminary/tentative list of the taxable persons of his area to the FBR.

            The Nazim of the Union Council should also do the job of the Head Master or Principal. In this way the FBR would be able to get the names of taxable persons from more than one source.

            The job of FBR should be to publish these names on Website of the FBR, Province-wise, District-wise, Tehsil-wise and Union Council-wise so every Pakistani may have access to the names of the tax payers. How much tax is paid by a tax payer? How much assets a particular tax payer has shown to the Government?

            The Patwari of a village should specify the amount of land of each person in a village producing agricultural products. It is for this reason that those who are landed aristocrats but paying nothing would also be exposed to the other tax payers.

            I have suggested the above methodology on the analogy of the penal procedures in which a resident of a village has been empowered to inform the Police if he finds any dead body or occurrence of any cognizable offence. The job of the ordinary citizen is to inform the Police about any offence, further the Police is under obligation to investigate the offence and find the culprits.

            Similarly, to find out in details the case of each taxable person is the job of the FBR. The number of tax payers cannot be increased without the assistance of the general public and this job needs to be done war footings if the Government wishes to minimise the burden of increasing either the number of taxes or amount of each tax. Instead of increasing the amount of tax, the number of tax payers needs to increased.

            The Chief Justice in each hearing of any case observes that all the evils cropped up due to deviation from the Constitution. Those who challenged the NRO are of the view that it is discriminatory law hence should be declared null and void. My purpose of mentioning the NRO was just to bring to the notice of those who are preparing the lists of the taxable persons in the Country should desist from discriminatory trends. The discriminatory treatment needs to be curtailed in respect of payment of taxes. At present some people of groaning under the burden of taxes while others are living without any liability. They have kept the cat in the bag while I want that the cat should be brought out of the bag. No one knows what is the exact number of tax paying persons in the Country? No one knows who is paying tax and who is not. What amount is paid as tax by a tax payer? What are the actual assets of a person who is paying tax?

            I want the supervision of Supreme Court for this reason that at present I found no other authority to handle this matter with utmost honesty and devotion. I know that it is not the job of the Court to supervise this arduous job of minor details but it is easy to receive a complete list of tax payers from the Head of FBR annually and to compare that with that of the list of previous year to find out how many names of new tax payers have been included in the list in the subsequent years.

            At present whatever the politicians, bureaucrats, businessmen, army, Judiciary may say, it is a fact that the Country has not been looted by a Teacher, Clerk, peon, labour, owner of a small shop, unemployed etc. The lists of names issued by various authorities show the names of big ones who have harmed this Country either in one way or another and have still occupied influential posts in the Government and that is why they hamper the process of cleansing either in one way or another.

            Normally, when a Government servant is accused of any misconduct, he is suspended or forced to go on leave to vacate the post for another servant just to obviate the eventuality of using his influential and for the transparency of enquiry proceedings but in my Country the “Cart is before the horse” and accused persons were first baptised through NRO and then they were given posts of high authority. In such situation only the Supreme Court can give verdict that whether an accused person should be kept on post of authority. Why this discrimination between a Civil Servant and any other person of Authority? When suspension and removal from the posts is efficacious for the enquiry proceedings in case of a Civil Servant then why this recipe is used in case of other Governmental authorities?

            As the matter is in the Court and it is not justifiable for me to give my comments but my discussion is not about the matter in the Court. My stress is on the point of discriminatory treatment which is prevalent everywhere, not merely in the NRO. I want that discrimination should be removed wherever it is found. I have only hinted that when a Civil Servant is removed/suspended for the fairness of the enquiry this dictum should be applied on others when such circumstances arise.

            When a person of low income is forced to pay tax then why not the big agriculturists, landlords. This discrimination between agriculturist and industrialist needs to be removed. Both earn taxable amount annually but the agriculturists do not pay agriculture tax because the majority of the Politicians belong to this category and have not yet passed law regarding agriculture tax. A Government Servant pays tax annually because his salary is in the hands of his employers but the big agriculturists who have heaps of wealth have given liberty by law!

            I put in my article a few sentences which I taken from the news report of Dawn Mr. Nasir Iqbal Thursday, 10 Dec, 2009. ‘We are not after the blood of anyone but only interested in ensuring that the money should come back if it belongs to the people,’ the chief justice said. For how long we will continue standing here as day in and day out we are committing the same mistakes and errors,’ the chief justice observed, adding: ‘When will we mend our ways.’ ‘Had we adhered to the Constitution, we would not be hearing from the Transparency International that we were a corrupt country and ranked 42nd in their index,’ he said.

Advocate Pirzada said the remedy lay in accepting mistakes. He stressed the need for a new beginning with a clean slate and regretted that the country was fragmenting and the enemy was from within. ‘This nation deserves better because we are good people and have always excelled in foreign countries,’ he said. He said the textile industry of England had been revived by immigrants from here. ‘Nothing is wrong with the people. The only problem is that we have not strengthened institutions and educated the people.’

Justice Khalilur Rehman Ramday said it was painful to see that ‘as individuals we are always busy securing benefits for ourselves. We need reconciliation with ourselves by improving norms, morality and values instead of making money. Where will we go with all this money. Look what happened to the Shah of Iran and President Marcos of the Philippines. We have shown the way to the nation by offering sacrifices over the past two years but we cannot build the nation and it has to build itself.

‘When the nation and the people are on the right path then success is the only answer and all of us sitting here is the example.’

By Sohail Khan of The NEWS Tuesday, December 08, 2009, The apex court directed the NAB chairman to provide a complete list of the people, who were financially benefited under the infamous ordinance. “The court should be provided name of a person who even managed to get benefit of Rs 5,” Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry remarked while heading a full court, hearing constitutional petitions, challenging the NRO. The chief justice observed that the NRO being a discriminatory law violates the basic fundamental rights as the law benefited only a particular class.

The chief justice further observed that the infamous ordinance also violates articles 4, 5, 2-A and Article 25 of the Constitution. “How it is possible that an accused of crime is being put behind the bars while others got free,” the chief justice observed.

At the end I would like to add so much that this case/matter is a matter of life and death and fully deserved to be handled under the concept of removal of  â€œDiscrimination Among the Tax-Payers” because we can only flourish when we perform our own duty and correct the arteries and veins of the financial system of the Country otherwise more demands from International Monetary Agencies and dependence on charity of foreign countries is our destiny.

Manzoor Ahmad Yousafzai

Saturday, December 12, 2009