Of Death And Taxes

tomb of jehangir photoHuman condition in Pakistan is quite grim. There is not a single road that is not stampeded with vehicular and pedestrian traffic. Road accidents happen quite frequently all over the country. Death is also a quite recurring event in Pakistan. It is frequently reported on television channels that a person dies in Pakistan every second.

Although atrocities happen regularly in Pakistan, people still go out on the streets to complete their diurnal chores. Despite all of this normal daily life seems to be quite calm and commonplace at times. The very fact that most people still manage to travel across to their desired destinations safely and come back mostly normally is miraculous in its own right.

There is infrastructure for almost everything in Pakistan. There are all sorts of institutions and amenities of life. The country is quite rich in terms of its natural resources too. However, not everyone has access to most of the basic necessities of life. One of the reasons is that despite the fact that Pakistan is an extremely resourceful country, it is an extremely populous country too.

There are One hundred and eighty million people in Pakistan. And there are all sorts of people among them. We have army personnel, politicians, political wannabes, civilians, bloody civilians and all sorts of bloody civilians. In Pakistan we have people who are good, bad and ugly. And indeed if you are looking for the kind of person you have never ever seen or heard of before, chances are that you would easily find one such person in Pakistan.

Pakistan hosts an extremely stratified society. Our society has many hues and colors. And it is quite easy to tell apart that which stratum of the society a person hails from. There is not much uniformity in our society. And although diversity can be a good thing, a main reason for many dimensions of this despicable diversity is poverty.

Despite its problems Pakistan has been a fairly easy country to live in in the past. Although most people have not had good jobs, houses, monetary benefits, better education and health facilities, the general culture of the country was quite accommodating. However, with a population that is soaring at a rapid pace, and that is expected to increase by another two hundred million by the next couple of decades, what ever is left of our cultural tolerance is also at stake.

What adds to our misery is the imposition of taxes. We have all sorts of taxes in Pakistan too. General sales tax, income tax, wealth tax, property tax, tax for owning numerous vehicles beyond a certain number, tax for buying a telephone sim card, tax for using a public lavatory. The list goes on! According to this Wikipedia article there around seventy different types of taxes in Pakistan.

axes have been in Pakistan since ever. However, people never paid them. The reason why people never paid taxes is also obvious. Most people in Pakistan believe that any amount of tax that they pay would end up in the pockets of our corrupt politicians. And that is why people believe that paying taxes is not only futile, it is also naive. Instead, people devoted to the welfare of humanity choose to pay zakat to trusted organizations and NGOs.

Tax evasion is not going to remain a possibility in Pakistan in the future. In as early as the next ten years, people of Pakistan would be overwhelmed with tax related issues. Government would collect taxes ruthlessly and act quite punitively towards those who evade it. The government would also be quite aware of the tax evaders as well. All of this has already become possible due to the highly evolved electronic profiling systems of people.

Paying taxes is a good thing and many people are privy about its benefits. For instance, the taxation system of Scandinavia is well known to the ordinary folks and it is greatly admired and envied. In Scandinavia people have to pay a lot of taxes. Altogether, taxes could be as much as half of the salary of working person. However, the theme behind such taxation schemes is quite gentle.

Younger people in Scandinavia pay taxes and the senile get pensions. The pensions are quite handsome and the pensioner can afford a comfortable life with that. And when the young get old, their tax is returned to them in the form of a pension to them. This is a beautiful cycle.

Taxes in Pakistan should also be introduced for the greater benefit of the society. Anything that improves the life of an ordinary citizen is good and should be adopted. However, the truth is that in Pakistan new rules and regulations are made and implemented in order to open the mouth of corruption. With the inclusion of taxes this mouth should also be closed.

Photo by The Wandering Angel

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CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 Of Death And Taxes by Psyops Prime is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

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