Taxing low-income citizens is ‘insane advice’: industry

With citizens already braving high food prices, massive power bills, and expensive fuel, a World Bank concern that the income tax exemption threshold for salaried individuals is “suboptimally high” has rubbed salt into many already festering wounds. In Pakistan, salaried people earning Rs50,000 or below per month are currently exempt from any tax. So, if the government goes on to follow the World Bank’s recommendation, many more citizens already struggling to make ends meet will find it even more difficult to survive in a challenging economic environment. Several industrialists, employers, and trade union body representatives who spoke to Dawn said the proposal to tax lower incomes would be disastrous for people working in the private, corporate, and industrial sectors. The World Bank’s recommendation would be “an economic genocide for the people earning Rs50,000 per month”, Nasir Mahmood, secretary of the National Trade Union Federation (NTUF), told Dawn, stressing that the amount was barely equal to $175.