Huzaima & Ikram

Huzaima & Ikram Our law firm provides services in all areas, specially in tax and corporate matters. Our expert team

We provide services in many areas of law, specialising in taxation, domestic and international

The late economist, Dr Pervez Tahir, coined an evocative expression for Pakistan’s fiscal establishment: revenue-cracy. ...
27/09/2026

The late economist, Dr Pervez Tahir, coined an evocative expression for Pakistan’s fiscal establishment: revenue-cracy. It describes more than the Federal Board of Revenue. It captures a system preoccupied with collecting the annual target rather than constructing an equitable fiscal contract.
A state unable to mobilise sufficient equitable revenue borrows. Debt servicing compresses fiscal space. Lower fiscal space increases pressure for additional revenue. Governments return to those already documented because they are the easiest to tax. Investment suffers. Growth remains weak. External financing gaps re-appear. Another IMF programme follows.
This is not a dependency imposed entirely from abroad. Pakistan negotiates IMF programmes as a sovereign member. Many Fund demands—taxing under-taxed sectors, improving energy-sector finances, controlling losses of state-owned enterprises and strengthening public financial management—address genuine domestic failures.
Pakistan does not need to be free from debt. No modern economy does. It needs freedom from dependence on debt for survival. The difference between the two is the difference between borrowing to finance transformation and borrowing because transformation never occurred.

The roots of vulnerability lie in what the governments borrow for, what the national economy produces and how the country is governed

China buys Iranian oil, trades intensively with Saudi Arabia and other Gulf Cooperation Council states, and depends upon...
26/09/2026

China buys Iranian oil, trades intensively with Saudi Arabia and other Gulf Cooperation Council states, and depends upon both the Strait of Hormuz and Bab el-Mandeb remaining open. It therefore has reasons to restrain instability even while opposing important aspects of United States policy towards Iran.
This produces a paradox for Tehran as well. Iran may gain tactical leverage from influence over actors capable of threatening strategic maritime routes. But prolonged disruption also damages China, the great power on which Iran increasingly depends for oil purchases and diplomatic support.
The same contradiction confronts Washington. Sanctions may weaken an adversary today while strengthening its determination to build alternative channels tomorrow. Military power may destroy installations while generating asymmetric resistance elsewhere. Economic coercion may compel compliance in particular transactions while reducing enthusiasm for continued dependence on the system through which that coercion operates.

The Middle East is again demonstrating a lesson Washington has repeatedly resisted: possessing overwhelming power is not the same as producing a stable order…

Pakistan has borrowed hundreds of millions of dollars for tax administration and justice reform. A reform loan does not ...
26/09/2026

Pakistan has borrowed hundreds of millions of dollars for tax administration and justice reform. A reform loan does not leave behind a dam or railway, but it must leave an institutional asset: better tax capacity, faster justice, professional administration, reliable data, lower compliance costs or stronger accountability. If another externally financed reform programme is required a decade later to solve substantially the same institutional problem, the return on earlier borrowing deserves rigorous public examination. The financial system reproduces the same pattern domestically.
The State Bank of Pakistan has identified a strong sovereign-bank nexus. Persistent fiscal deficits make government securities attractive to banks, while lending to farmers, small businesses and new exporters requires information, risk assessment and monitoring. Private-sector credit remains exceptionally low relative to the size of the economy. The state absorbs savings that productive enterprise needs and then wonders why production and exports remain weak. This is where the experience of cooperative and development finance becomes relevant. Rabobank grew from local Dutch agricultural credit cooperatives formed because farmers lacked affordable finance. The importance of that history is not the brand. It is the institutional principle: local information, pooled savings, shared risk and finance structured around productive cash flows.

Pakistan’s real challenge is not how much it borrows, but whether borrowing builds the revenue, exports, human capital and institutions needed to make

After the invasion, the intention to bleed the Soviet Union was explicit. Zbigniew Brzezinski told Carter that Afghanist...
26/09/2026

After the invasion, the intention to bleed the Soviet Union was explicit. Zbigniew Brzezinski told Carter that Afghanistan could become a “Soviet Vietnam”. He recommended more money, arms and technical advice for the resistance, with Islamic countries enlisted in propaganda and covert action. A national struggle was recast as an instrument of global Cold War strategy.
The arrangement divided labour. The United States supplied money, weapons and diplomatic cover. Saudi Arabia supplied funds and helped give the campaign religious reach. Pakistan supplied sanctuary, routes and the decisive gatekeeping institution: the Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate (ISI). American and Saudi assistance was funnelled through Pakistan; the ISI helped train the rebels and distribute arms.
That method mattered. Afghanistan’s resistance was never a single force. It contained monarchists, nationalists, traditional religious leaders, Islamists, local commanders and communities defending their homes. Control of the pipeline allowed Pakistan’s military regime to reward preferred clients and weaken others. Under General Zia-ul-Haq, Islamisation at home and jihad across the border reinforced each other. The clients considered most useful to Islamabad acquired weapons, money and political standing disproportionate to their support inside Afghanistan.

Kabul fell to the mujahideen in 1992. Rival factions then devastated the capital and dismembered the state they had claimed to liberate.

ہماری کتاب *پاکستان میں ٹیکس اصلاحات : تاریخی و تنقیدی جائزہ* (پائیڈ، 2020) میں واضح کیا گیا ہے کہ بیرون ملک سے مالی معا...
25/09/2026

ہماری کتاب *پاکستان میں ٹیکس اصلاحات : تاریخی و تنقیدی جائزہ* (پائیڈ، 2020) میں واضح کیا گیا ہے کہ بیرون ملک سے مالی معاونت سے چلنے والے اصلاحاتی پروگرام بارہا ایسے نظاموں کے لیے فنڈز فراہم کرتے رہے ہیں جو انتظامی تقسیم، غیر منطقی قوانین، ٹیکس استثنیٰ، ریفنڈز میں رکاوٹوں اور طاقتور غیر ٹیکس ادا کرنے والے شعبوں کو حاصل سیاسی تحفظ جیسے بنیادی مسائل حل نہیں کرتے۔
ایکنک کو چاہیے کہ چار اہم ریکارڈ عوام کے سامنے آنے تک منظوری مؤخر کردے۔ پہلا ریکارڈ ہر ٹیکس اصلاحاتی قرض، گرانٹ اور تکنیکی معاونت کے منصوبے کی مکمل مفاہمتی تفصیل پر مشتمل ہو، جس میں منظوری، جاری شدہ رقوم، زیر التوا واجبات، اثاثے اور فراہم کیے گئے نظام کی تفصیلات شامل ہوں۔ دوسرا ریکارڈ سابقہ پروگراموں کا آزادانہ طور پر تیار کردہ مالی افادیت اور اثرات کا آڈٹ ہو۔

پاکستان کی ٹیکس انتظامیہ کو ایک بار پھر بیرونی مالی معاونت سے ٹیکنالوجی کے ذریعے اصلاحات کا حل پیش کیا جارہا ہے

FBR says PRR created foundational systems; however, its data centres cannot support graphics-processing-unit-intensive m...
25/09/2026

FBR says PRR created foundational systems; however, its data centres cannot support graphics-processing-unit-intensive machine learning. That may be technically correct, but an assertion is not a feasibility study. Reviewers identified the absence of a proper gap analysis, a comprehensive data-security framework, clear data governance and an assessment of open-source alternatives. The project must also be reconciled with FBR’s separately approved Rs350 billion Transformation Plan.
Digitalisation cannot repair defective tax policy. Pakistan’s system still relies excessively on withholding, minimum and presumptive taxation, indirect levies and coercive collection from already documented persons. Artificial intelligence can process data. It cannot supply constitutional tax policy, institutional integrity or political will.
As our book ‘Tax Reforms in Pakistan: Historic &Critical Review’ (PIDE 2020) demonstrates, imported reform programmes repeatedly fund systems without resolving fragmented administration, irrational laws, exemptions, blocked refunds and political protection for powerful untaxed sectors.

Pakistan’s tax administration is again being offered a foreign-financed technological cure. The Central Development...

Population magnifies the challenge. Using the government’s cited annual population growth of 2.55 percent merely as an i...
24/09/2026

Population magnifies the challenge. Using the government’s cited annual population growth of 2.55 percent merely as an illustration, a population of around 255 million would approach 328 million after ten years if that rate persisted. A US$1 trillion economy would then mean per-capita GDP of only about US$3,050. The trillion-dollar threshold would be an important milestone, not development completed.
The fourth test is the state itself. Pakistan’s development plans have repeatedly contained sensible objectives. The missing variable has been institutional continuity and implementation. Generalist administration cannot substitute indefinitely for specialist capacity in taxation, energy, trade, cities, technology, water, education and finance. Nor can federal ministries perform functions constitutionally and practically belonging to provinces and local governments. *The journey that began with control over revenue ends with control over productive capacity. By 2047, the decisive measure of independence will not be the size of Pakistan’s debt or even the headline size of its GDP. It will be whether its citizens possess the human, institutional and productive capacity to finance their own future*.

The journey that began with control over revenue ends with control over productive capacity. By 2047, the decisive measure of independence

Colonialism never arrived as administration alone. It came with the soldier, surveyor, revenue official and compliant lo...
22/09/2026

Colonialism never arrived as administration alone. It came with the soldier, surveyor, revenue official and compliant local notable. It measured land, classified communities, redirected labour and converted political submission into an orderly entry in the imperial record.
The record rarely preserved what the conquered felt. That work was often performed by poetry. A ballad could remember a battle that official history reduced to a “punitive expedition”. A song could expose the collaborator whom the file praised as loyal. A verse carried from village to village could preserve a people’s dignity after their weapons had been taken away.
This is the starting point of our new series. The last series, *Poetry, Power & Humanity*, explored classical voices that challenged possession, hierarchy, exclusion and the worship of power. *Poetry, Resistance & Humanity* will move into the colonial and postcolonial periods. It will recover poets in Punjabi, Sindhi, Pashto and Balochi whose work confronted empire and the arrangements that survived it.
*Resistance, in this inquiry, will not mean anger for its own sake. Nor will every nationalist slogan qualify as liberating poetry. A poem that opposes one ruler while demanding the subordination of another community merely changes the identity of the master. The test is whether resistance enlarges humanity: whether it defends freedom of conscience, equality of persons, the dignity of labour, social justice and the right of every human being to live without subservience*.

Colonial power possessed armies, maps and archives. The people possessed memory, rhythm and the spoken word. The empire

Pakistan’s difficulty is that weak revenue, weak exports and low productivity interact. When exports cannot generate suf...
21/09/2026

Pakistan’s difficulty is that weak revenue, weak exports and low productivity interact. When exports cannot generate sufficient foreign exchange, external obligations become harder to service. When revenue is inadequate, interest payments crowd out development. When development is compressed, human and physical capital suffer. Low productivity then restricts growth, exports and future revenue. Debt becomes both consequence and amplifier of the low-growth trap.
The comparison should not be used to argue that Pakistan can safely borrow more because Japan, America or Italy owe more. That would reproduce the very error we are challenging. Nor should lower debt automatically be celebrated if it is achieved by suppressing development expenditure while structural weaknesses remain.
The correct objective is to increase debt-carrying capacity while reducing dependence on borrowing for recurrent survival. That requires a different fiscal state.

Pakistan’s difficulty is that weak revenue, weak exports and low productivity interact. When exports cannot generate

*Part IV ended by asking whether Pakistan had replaced colonial revenue extraction with democratic fiscal government—or ...
20/09/2026

*Part IV ended by asking whether Pakistan had replaced colonial revenue extraction with democratic fiscal government—or merely nationalised the Collector and internationalised the revenue target. That question leads directly to debt. Revenuecracy explains how the state extracts. Debtocracy explains what happens when revenue, production and exports remain too weak to sustain the state, and refinancing becomes a recurring condition of governing*.
In February 2020, we used the term “debtocracy” in an article. The language was deliberately stark. We wrote of a “debt prison” and a “debt-slavery-syndrome” to emphasise that chronic indebtedness has political as well as economic consequences. Six years later, the metaphor needs refinement, not abandonment. Debt is not slavery in the literal sense. Creditors do not own a sovereign state. The serious question is how much effective policy freedom remains when old obligations can be met only through new borrowing, rollovers or externally supported adjustment.

Part IV ended by asking whether Pakistan had replaced colonial revenue extraction with democratic fiscal government—or merely nationalised the Collector and internationalised the revenue target. That question leads directly to debt. Revenuecracy explains how the state extracts. Debtocracy explains...

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