VAT or GST in VAT mode is normally implemented either in robust or sustained economies, but fortunately or unfortunately Pakistan is in economic laboratory of the IMF which is in a process of experimenting about the fact that what will going to happen if the VAT is implemented in a country passing through recessionary period as experienced around the globe!
It is about to be experienced in a country, riddled with economic turmoil, shrinking size of economy, severe internal political problems and chaos among its provinces over the distribution even after NFC award. This is not merely a personal opinion, but is evidenced from international press - Washington Post (Lori Montgomery) whereby the emphatic rejection by both parties in recent days of a value-added tax, a sales tax, imposed by nearly every other developed nation.
After a White House economic advisor was reported speaking semi-favourably about a VAT, the White House this week vigorously denied that President Obama is looking to include the tax in his deficit-cutting arsenal. "This is not something the president has proposed, nor is it under consideration," White House press secretary Robert Gibbs told reporters. The VAT isn't the only potential budget solution drawing fire. Republicans howled about cuts to medicare in the recent healthcare overhaul, and no one in Washington wants to raise taxes on the 98 percent of taxpayers whom the White House has defined as the middle class.
Anyway, VAT/GST has increasingly become steadily more important as a source of revenue around the globe. In Mexico and Turkey, it contributes around 50% of the government revenues. This seems to be a trend but a cautious one, and some commentators have asked why the governments don't rely even more heavily on indirect tax revenues and introduction of VAT law in Pakistan may be the answer irrespective of recessionary economy! But another answer is that higher indirect taxes are politically difficult to introduce as taxpayer often question the benefits of paying taxes.
The link between higher indirect taxes and higher prices is obvious to anyone who buys goods and services, but the link between lower corporate tax rates and increased inward investment often results in increased employment and infrastructure development, which is less well understood by robust or sustained economies instead of recessionary one! This article is endeavouring to assess the ground realities pertaining to implementation of a comprehensive value-added tax.
These tactics suggest that as well as attracting new investment, retaining current investment is a success in itself. In November 2006, Lee Hsien, the Prime Minister of Singapore, while speaking to the parliament said, "if we have to bring our corporate tax down, every percentage point we bring it down will cost us $400 million a year. It is big money. Therefore, we need to consider raising indirect taxes, in other words, the Goods and Services Tax. It is now five percent; I think we need to push it up to seven percent. Even seven percent will still lower than nearly all other countries, which have GST or VAT. But if we raise it from five percent to seven percent, it will give us precious extra resources to implement social programmes."
This is exactly what the Singapore government did in its 2007 budget, announcing a two percent cut in corporate tax rates to 18 percent from next year and an increase in GST to seven percent. There seems to be a clear deviation from this principle in Pakistan's VAT introduction fiscal policy.
This nexus of introduction of VAT, coupled with reduced tax rate, is not based on any myth but on realities. For taxpayers, introduction of VAT has immediate consequences (discussed below). One of the advantages of the VAT over direct profits tax is that they supply a steady flow of funds throughout the year, rather than lump sums at widely spaced intervals evidenced in direct taxes.
This present government failed to chalk out any strategy to communicate the benefit of a 'low direct tax strategy combined with principled VAT regime. It may well be in the long-term interests of a country to follow this path, but the voters may need persuading of the benefits of paying today for better economy tomorrow.
The outcome of any new legislation in this area in the EU will see a shift of the VAT revenue from one country to another principally from low rate countries to high rate countries. And no mention of the EU VAT modernisation issues would be complete without a reference to the need to tackle the carousel/missing trader fraud issue, which is costing the EU governments very large sums in lost revenue. This drove urgent legislative change across the EU.
The issues faced by the EU are not alien to Pakistan, but will surface soon! For instance, if a person is registered as service provider in Khyber-Pakhtoonkhwa and delivers the service in Punjab on the instruction of a person registered in Sindh, then where will the input and output be paid and claimed. This and other similar peculiar issues will crop up!
Further one school of thought is of the opinion that if the provinces are finding it difficult to share, then wouldn't that also be difficult for the federation to allow input of services VAT adjustment against output of goods and federal services! Moreover, if the provincial VAT will be collected by the provinces themselves, then this may tantamount to increasing the compliance cost by the businesses which are already overburdened with 47 compliance's a year according to the World Bank survey conducted by PwC but actually they are around 58 if labour law compliance's are included.
The ground reality of operation of taxpayers is that some of the companies registered offices are located either in Sindh, Punjab or Islamabad irrespective of the fact that their operations may be carried out in Khyber-Pakhtoonkhwa or Balochistan. Consequently, the registration domain either at registered address or operational place is the key question when the provinces come to know about their actual share.
Further, continuing with the example in previous paragraphs above, if a person is registered as service provider in Khyber-Pakhtoonkhwa and delivers the service in Punjab on the instruction of a person registered in Sindh then where will the input and output be paid and claimed.
In case, if it is decided that this situation will be avoided by slapping 15% on output of services in the province, as suggested by Kaiser Bengali in the ACCA per-budget discussion, where the service provider is registered and without allowing any input either in Punjab or Sindh, then would such fixed rate cost be acceptable to businesses or could anyone call it VAT!
The Dayton Accord (2001) of Bosnia proved disastrous and they had to revert to central government. Bird and Abel (2007) study also concluded that transferring the right to the federating unit is preferable when regional units either do not have the capacity or are in a process to build the same.

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COMPOSITE RATE
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                                                   Amount             VAT
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Sale                                   5%     1,000,000.00    (50,000.00)
Cost of Good Sold (COGS)              15%     (700,000.00)     105,000.00
Other Admissible Expenses Input       15%     (100,000.00)      15,000.00
VAT - (Payable) / Refundable                                    70,000.00
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SINGLE RATE TILL COGS
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                                                   Amount             VAT
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Sale                                   5%     1,000,000.00    (50,000.00)
Cost of Good Sold                      5%     (700,000.00)      35,000.00
Other Admissible Expenses Input       15%     (100,000.00)      15,000.00
VAT - (Payable) / Refundable                                            -
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SINGLE RATE FOR SUPPLY CHAIN
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                                                   Amount             VAT
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Sale                                   5%     1,000,000.00    (50,000.00)
Cost of Good Sold                      5%     (700,000.00)      35,000.00
Other Admissible Expenses Input        5%     (100,000.00)       5,000.00
VAT - (Payable) / Refundable                                  (10,000.00)
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As evident from composite rate table above, multiple rates for essential items will be deteriorating. This process would result in unnecessarily blockage of funds of businesses in the shape of refunds, meaning thereby cost of funds to businesses, which will further increase the inflation. Similar results will also be evidenced where single rates are restricted to the cost of goods sold. The ultimate solution is that the whole supply chain rates of essential items should be extended to business involved in essential items supply chain.
To deliver this benefit, taxpayers, in their capacities as tax collectors, have to have accounting systems that can provide accurate real time information on transactions and the associated tax liability.
Keeping the systems up to date with tax authorities' information requirement is a major cost and resource issue for the business sector. As indirect taxes become more important to governments, so regulators are intensifying their scrutiny of business tax systems to satisfy themselves that tax revenues are not at risk.
Further, till today, the FBR failed to issue the rules relating to registration, deregistration, filing of return, declaration, summaries, statements, record keeping, accounts, related documentation, tax invoices, credit and debit notes, refunds, prepayments, audit, alternate dispute resolution, charging of fee for processing of documentation and official acts, recovery of arrears, including compounding of offence and appointment and management of e-intermediaries then how could it expect from businesses to cope with new law fortnightly.
(1) Cancellation of supply (2) alteration in consideration for supply (3) return of supply (4) fundamental variation in the nature of taxable supply (5) bad debt (6) goods applied for a private purpose (7) registration or cancellation thereof (8) change of rates (9) advance payment of tax at import stage (10) withholding by government and large taxpayers.
Taxpayers are cautioned that the concepts of progressive/periodic and ancillary/incidental supplies are of utmost importance and would have significant implications on supplies under contractual agreement and normal supplies.
Further, the VAT law seems to be a deviation from policy of registration of taxpayers as it intends to give a separate registration number instead of relying over taxpayer registration number [formerly NTN] issued under the Income Tax Ordinance, 2001.
Moreover, the concept of Federal VAT services is missing in provisions relating to imposition of tax, person liable to pay tax, value of supply and time of supply. Further, it is beyond imagination to understand the rationale why the concept of exempt and zero-rated supply was not incorporated in ancillary or incidental supplies.
In more furtherance, there seems to be a gross conceptual drafting error in Sub-Section (3) of Section 18. The number 332 used in Section 24(4)(d) should be corrected to 32 while clause (e) and (f) should be shuffled up to give the section numbering effect. Further, the Rs 1,000 limit set is refund and carry-forward sections is too low.
CONCLUSION The Dayton Accord (2001) of Bosnia proved disastrous and they had to revert to central government. Bird and Abel (2007) also concluded that transferring the right to the federating unit is preferable when the regional units either do not have the capacity or trying to build the same. The EU has not yet concluded on distribution of taxes! Consequently, the centralised dual VAT system of Germany where revenue is shared with the state is the best system (TAT 1988).
For or taxpayers, introduction of the VAT has immediate consequences. To deliver this benefit, the taxpayers, in their capacities as tax collectors, have to have accounting systems that can provide accurate real time information on transactions and the associated tax liability. Keeping the systems up to date with tax authorities' information requirement is a major cost and resource issue for the business sector.
As indirect taxes become more important to the governments, so regulators are intensifying their scrutiny of business tax systems to satisfy themselves that the tax revenues are not at risk. Contrary to this, the FBR failed to issue the necessary rules, then how could it expect from businesses to cope with new law fortnightly.
Multiple rates for essential items will be deteriorating as this would result in unnecessarily blockage of funds of businesses in the shape of refunds meaning thereby cost of funds to businesses, which will further increase the inflation. The ultimate solution is that the whole supply chain rates of essential items should be extended to business involved in essential items supply chain.
One school of thought is of the opinion that if the provinces are finding it difficult to share the services the VAT then wouldn't that also be difficult for the federation to allow input of services VAT adjustment against output of goods and federal services!
The ground reality of operation of taxpayers is that some of the companies registered offices are located either in Sindh, Punjab or Islamabad irrespective of the fact that their operations may be carried out in Khyber-Pakhtoonkhwa or Balochistan. Consequently, the registration domain either at registered address or operational place is the key question when the provinces come to know about their actual share. In case the provinces decides that they will slap 15% on output of services where the service provider is registered and will not allow any input, then would such fixed rate cost be acceptable to businesses or could anyone call it VAT!
This present government failed to chalk out any strategy to communicate the benefit of a low direct tax strategy combined with principle based VAT regime. It may well be in the long-term interests of a country to follow this path and respective assemblies may need to reconsider this instead of passing the bill in haste, but the voters may need persuading of the benefits of paying today for better economy tomorrow:
(The writer is Chairman, ACCA Budget and Tax Committee [South], member of Karachi Chamber of Commerce and Industry's Tax Committee and member Executive Committee of Professional Accountants Forum) (taxonomy.ashraf@gmail.com)