The Sindh Assembly on Thursday passed Sindh Finance Bill 2015 amid protest and criticism by opposition parties for scaling up taxation and increase in tax rate. MQM's Syed Sardar Ahmed urged the government to retain the tax rate and avoid its hike, saying that the taxation measures would push more people into poverty. He said common people were unable to feed more the government with their declining financial resources.
But Chief Minister Sindh said the new taxes were an initiative to widen the taxation circle and not to burden the common people. "The imposition of new taxes will not burden the common people rather include those in the tax net who could pay the tax," he told the house.
The opposition parties tore and tossed up the copies of finance bill and shouted 'no to budget', calling it anti-people. Syed Sardar Ahmed said: "people are dying. We strongly oppose the finance bill 2015." He said the people financial condition was 'too' bad to pay. "People don't want increase in taxes, and the taxation will help generate only Rs 5 billion of which Rs 4.75 billion, the urban centers of the province will have to pay," he said and termed the hike in tax rate as 'injustice' with the people living in cities.
MQM's Khawaja Izhar-ul-Hasan said that his party had already rejected the budget 2015-16. PML-F's Nand Kumar also opposed the provincial budget and increase in taxes. He said his party condemned the increase in tax rate. The opposition parties' lawmakers walked out of the house while protesting the finance bill with shouts of 'unacceptable,' 'new tax unacceptable', 'anti-public budget unacceptable' etc. The treasury passed the finance bill in the absence of the opposition. After passage of the bill, Qaim Ali Shah called the opposition's protest not a good 'deed'. He defended the finance bill and increase in tax rate, saying that "it will not burden the poor people. We have never taxed the poor nor will do."
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