Pakistan’s tax system has undergone significant reforms over the last two decades, leading to the modernization of direct and indirect taxes. More recent times have seen the rationalization of income tax rates, the introduction of self-assessment for filing income taxes, some expansion of...

Pakistan’s economic development is once again threatened by macroeconomic imbalances. Broadly speaking, high growth in the 1960s was followed by low growth in the 1970s, and high growth in the 1980s by low growth in the 1990s, as macroeconomic vulnerabilities derailed development. Supported by...

The Government of Pakistan is considering an extensive tax and administrative reform by 2009 and asked the World Bank to provide a discussion paper on several technical issues. This report is dealing with the international aspects of the tax system: (a) the double tax agreements, and (b) the...

The Pakistan system of taxing enterprises has undergone some major changes in recent years. Nevertheless, the corporate tax system remains plagued by a number of problems. The existence of numerous exemption programs has significantly reduced tax revenues, and has greatly distorted the...

This paper undertakes a critical evaluation of the strengths and weaknesses of all of Pakistan’s major sources of tax revenue: the individual income tax, the corporate income tax, the sales tax, excise taxes and trade taxes on imports. For each major tax it describes the nature of the current...

The fundamental proposal for comprehensive individual income tax reform in Pakistan is to provide an integrated income tax structure that pertains to income of all individuals (including non-incorporated businesses) and which otherwise dramatically simplifies the taxation of individual income in...

Who pays Pakistan’s taxes? Do they fall inordinately on low-income families, or on labor working in the formal sector, or is the tax burden borne disproportionately by the higher income classes, who also own most of the capital in the country? The fairness of the tax system is not only...

This report provides estimates of Pakistan’s tax gap by type of tax and describes the methodologies and data used to produce these estimates. A country’s tax gap is the amount of tax that goes uncollected due to non-compliance with the tax law. For estimation purposes, the operational...

The purpose of this study is to review the status of revenue mobilization by sub-national Governments in Pakistan, and to identify reform options that might lead to a higher level of revenues and a better functioning fiscal decentralization. This analysis is based on case studies of Punjab and...