IT’S long been the most open of secrets in Pakistan. But to see it in black and white, that too from official quarters, gives the problem of tax avoidance by the country’s elected representatives a whole new dimension. The Parliamentarians Tax Directory, published by the Federal Board of Revenue at the behest of Finance Minister Ishaq Dar, is really a catalogue of shame. Except, those who ought to be ashamed will probably be defiant or just ignore the whole matter and wait for the next crisis to divert the national attention. The meaningless sums the country’s elected representatives have declared in income tax raise three fundamental issues. The first, which parliamentarians searching for a fig leaf may look towards, is that the whole process of filing tax returns — a legal requirement — is treated as optional or a pointless exercise by an overwhelming number of taxpayers. An awareness and education campaign about the taxpayers’ legal duty to file their tax returns annually followed by a punitive campaign against non-filers would go some way in fixing that problem.

The other two problems are where the truly monumental issues lie. How can the state build an income-tax recovery mechanism when the very people tasked with legislation and oversight of the executive are some of the most egregious violators of the law? Part of the answer, at least to begin with, is a campaign of naming and shaming — one the FBR has pushed for a while and which, to his credit, Finance Minister Dar has allowed to go ahead. Beyond that, however, is the hard institutional work of designing and implementing tax recovery systems that are transparent, effective and fair. That can only happen if it is a priority of the government — which it clearly has not been so far. The final, and perhaps most important, issue is what income tax evasion has meant for the structure and scope of the national tax net. Abysmally low — the tax-to-GDP ratio fell to 8.5pc in the last fiscal year — it is also terribly unjust because it is heavily skewed towards indirect taxes. So not only are the rich not paying their share, they’re making the poor pay more — a truly ugly picture, if ever there was one.

The essential question though: will the situation change? While many of Pakistan’s problems are often reduced to the vague issue of political will, in this case, it may really be true. But historical and international experience suggests that either a country is lucky enough to get a kind of leadership that is truly statesmanlike — which happens once in a generation, or even many generations — or circumstances, because of an economic implosion, prevent hard choices from being deferred. At the moment, however, it looks like Pakistan has neither of those factors present.