No news is a good news,so goes an age-old adage.It is in the air that the government is once again introducing an Amnesty Scheme with effect from Ist January 2016 enabling the owners of black money to convert their ill-gotten money into white by paying only one percent tax on it.It expects that black money to the tune of 200 billion rupees in possession of the filthy rich would, in this way,come under the tax net.This is not the first time that such a tax amnesty scheme is being introduced in the country.Umpteen such schemes were introduced with regular intervals.They speak volumes for failure of the governments ,both past and present,to recover taxes through traditional legal methods.Such schemes tantamount to putting a premium on corruption.They are analogous to the plea-bargain provision of the NAB under which a corrupt person is let off the hook after he deposits a small portion of the government money misappropriated by him.The fact of the matter is that it is only the weak and corrupt rulers who normally resort to such easy ways of tax collection because they don’t want to penalise the looters of national money as they belong to their so-called elite group which has been minting money through economic exploitation of the masses.May one ask the rulers how many tax dodgers were hanged upside down during the past 50 years or so?
The advisor on foreign affairs to the prime minister Sartaj Aziz was given a tough time by the senate chairman on last Monday during the course of discussion in the Senate on Pakistan’s decision to join the Saudi-led 34 countries’s military alliance. The octogenarian foreign affairs advisor could not present details of this highly controversial military Pact which has raised more questions than answers. He had to cut a sorry figure when the chairman senate made a sarcastic dig at him by asking him how come the government didn’t apprise itself of its aims and objectives before joining it?
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