Headline Sep 12, 2014/ ''' TAXATION -WELFARE -WORK- AND YOU '''

''' TAXATION -WELFARE -WORK- 

AND YOU '''

RIGHT AT THE OUTSET,  two great acknowledgements for two great  Imran Khans.  

One of them is the O'' Captain  and the other one is:

A Chartered Accountant, The University of Trinity, Dublin's, Masters, and now the head of Asia and Far East, who painstakingly taught me, Taxation Modelling and Welfare. And he had the patience to do so, over many years.

I am greatly blessed that the latter Imran Khan, happens to be my son.

The thousands by thousands of you who have asked me, from the world over, this is what I have to say:

What the  -O'' Captain is saying is,  that  spiritual and moral values are the  inter-temporal dimensions of freedom.

A people who in their  daily speech and conduct  in their private lives or   in public sphere  place scant value  upon   '' Justice,  human dignity,  honesty  and moral probity,   and sacrifice  of private profits for public gain-

Will not only cease to understand  and value the meaning of  freedom  but ultimately end up compromising it.''

O'' Captain, has demonstrated his thinking and his  ability to put his fingers on what is so terribly wrong with the country. And he is very focused and, in my judgement, would never forget his original intentions. 

So having said that,  let me now enumerate for you,  what Benjamin Franklin so correctly understood :   

''In this world nothing is certain but  Death and Taxes.'' 

In Pakistan, a VAT model GST approach has increasingly degenerated into an oppressive tool of rampant corruption, wide spread tax evasion and oppressive exploitation of masses.

The reasons are many and varied.

The initial stumbling block is the constitutional division of powers : sales tax on goods is a Federal subject while sales tax on on services and and immovable property falls in the provincial domain.

Inevitably the success of  VAT would depend on an integrated law that encompasses all the  three subjects  in one jurisdiction.

In continuous economic activities it is hard to segregate  value addition attributable to overlapping events of purchase, sale and services.

Vat on goods and services is inseparable.  That's why the New Zealanders call VAT :  Goods and Services Tax (GST). 

On the other hand, tax authorities in Pakistan have dubbed it as the General Sales Tax (GST)  to cover up the existing anomaly.

Secondly the design and drafting of  the Sales Tax Act   1990  has degenerated into meaningless mumbo jumbo through successive amendments   -rife with recurring cases of Tax fraud:  

Fake and flying invoices,   bogus refunds   and cascading of tax   -which only goes on to create pathologies, and tends to  stifle  economic activity. 

Thirdly, a VAT model GST approach has miserably failed to bring the informal sector of the economy to the surface for better  GDP reporting.

The Tax-to-GDP ratio, too, has just not improved,  ''AND IS ONE OF THE WORST IN THE WORLD.'' Therefore, the stagnation of the economic activity is deepening the economic malaise.

STUDENT MELISSA DEVILMA'S  world grew hard, cold and over powering just after her son was born in 2008.

She was  homeless,  jobless and alone,  and she needed help urgently.

The welfare system stepped in : she received  $478 in cash and $367  in food stamps each month, along with housing assistance that lowered the rent on her two  two-bedroom apartment  in Boston to $131.

Including health care, tax payers subsidised her to the tune of  $33,000 annually.

Ms Devilma  used the money to go to college and earn a bachelor's degree. She wants to get off the dole.

But she says that many of the other welfare recipients she knows are reluctant to seek work or an education. 

Life in the system is hardly  gold-plated, but it is comfortable enough. Evens Ms Devilma admits that,  if it not for her son and the recent expiry of her cash aid, she would rather live on the  welfare then take an entry level job at:

MacDonald's , which she considers unsuited to her level of education. As it is, she would take any job  ''just so I have that little money to provide for him.''

Policy wonks have long debated the extent to which  welfare discourages work. Clearly, it can. 

In very poor countries, where the choice is either to work or to starve, people work long long, back-breaking  hours growing food.

In rich countries, government safety nets limit how far anyone can fall. Yet these nets are very very hard to design.

Welfare states must balance the desire to keep people out of penury with equally humanitarian desire to not let them drift into utter misery and hollowness. 

America's last big welfare reform was in  1996, when Bill Clinton and a Republican led congress put some limits on cash benefits and and tightened the requirement that able bodied claimants must seek work.

The results have been impressive. The number of people receiving cash benefits under what is now called  the  Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) programme fell from   12.3m  people a month  in  1996 to  4.1m  in 2012. Employment among  single mothers rose sharply.

But some worry that welfare is once again encouraging idleness.

The Honour and Serving of the research continues. Thank you for reading and see you on the following one. 

And I request  Rabo, Dee, Malala,  Ali, Hussain, Ehsan, Saima, Haleema, Aqsa, Haider, Aneela, Meriam, Huma, Paras, Sorat, and millions of  Pakistani students to share this post forward with every university, college, school, every student, professor and teacher.

With respectful dedication to the Students, Professors and Teachers of the world. See Ya all on !WOW!   -the World Students Society Computers-Internet-Wireless:

''' Celebrating Honours '''

Good Night and God Bless!

SAM Daily Times - the Voice of the Voiceless