Complicated tax regime discouraging investment, compliance

Islamabad Chamber of Small Traders on Thursday said complicated tax system is not only discouraging investment but it is also discouraging compliance, therefore, it should be made friendly.

Income tax law is not only discouraging start-ups but it has failed to deliver therefore it should be replaced or amended to make it easily comprehensible, business-friendly, fair and acceptable to all the stakeholders, it said.

The time-tested, well-settled and easily understandable Income Tax Ordinance, 1979, was replaced by a complex law designed by a foreign expert who was not well aware of the ground realities, said Patron Islamabad Chamber of Small Traders Shahid Rasheed Butt.

The new set of laws enforced on the directives of IMF invited criticism from concerned quarters before promulgation as it was not designed to serve the purpose of the state but lenders, he added.

Shahid Rasheed Butt said that the IMF experts changed the basic scheme of the law and brought in inexplicable terminologies. Since then it has been amended for hundreds of times but it remains inconsistent and uninterruptable. 

Many tax practitioners, as well as the majority of the FBR officials, find it difficult to understand it which are a reason behind low revenue collection and malpractices.

He said that government should try to introduce new, friendly and clear income tax laws which should not be against the established principles of taxation, irrational, illogical, based on assumptions, self-contradictory or full of blunders.