ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s southwestern Baluchistan Assembly members have outshone their counterparts in the national and provincial assemblies in tax evasion as 58 MPAs out of 65 declared themselves as non-tax payers in 2008.
A study of their poll documents shows 58 MPAs served as ministers, advisers or held other public offices but none demonstrated compliance to tax laws.
Even Chief Minister Raisani declared Rs1,492 as income tax in 2008 poll papers, while the recently-installed opposition leader and the governor’s brother, Tariq Magsi, does not have a National Tax Number.
He has also been featured among those 3.5 million Pakistanis that authorities detected as out of the tax net but who frequently travels abroad, rides on luxury vehicles and lives in posh villas.
There are 10 members of the governor’s family who are members of provincial assemblies of Baluchistan and Sindh in addition to National Assembly and Senate, becoming the top political family with so many lawmakers.
None declared to have paid income tax, raising doubts about Magsi tribe’s head and Governor Zulfiqar Magsi as a taxpayer.
Besides Tariq, the governor’s three other relatives were elected MPAs of Baluchistan Assembly and none has declared any taxable income. They are Shama Parveen Magsi (Zulfiqar’s wife), Irfan Karim (his brother-in-law) and Rubina Irfan (brother-in-law’s wife who was later elected senator to fill the seat vacated by her sister-in-law Rehana Yahya Baloch). Rehana had also declared zero income when elected to the Senate in 2006. The governor’s relatives in the National Assembly and Senate are also non-taxpayers. Internews
