GIVEN that there are few mental asylums in the country and even those can barely accommodate their existing inmates, it is a good thing that not many of us pay taxes and therefore have to be registered with the CBR!
The government’s own statistics have established beyond reasonable doubt that each time the tax authorities ask tax payers to get their new NTN, the resulting identity crisis manifests itself in the rush of taxpayers pounding at the doors of the asylums, reeling off their several numbered identities, and demanding to be given sanctuary against the tax department. In a working lifetime carefully calculated to be as much as 50 years for the average Pakistani, medical scientists of repute have ascertained through controlled experiments on a group of non-government volunteers, that asking human beings to apply for new identities more than five times, results in clear displays of recognizable symptoms of acute schizophrenia, in as many as 8 out of 10 cases. Beyond the sixth request, the scientists are adamant, that there is almost 100% risk of amnesia compounded with loss of identity and von Nuremburgs disease.
In an exclusive interview, the CBR has accepted that after a meeting of the entire Board and the Heads of all the mental institutions in the country, it had deliberately put off a drive to increase the number of taxpayers, simply because the Heads had threatened to register themselves as inmates at their own institutions, bolt all the doors from the inside until the CBR had finalized a scheme for issuance of one number to each taxpayer for a lifetime. However, in its defence, a senior official claimed, on condition of anonymity of course, that the CBR was simply trying to raise its tax revenues at the IMF’s insistence, by asking each taxpayer to pay one hundred rupees for a new number. This measure is calculated to triple the CBR’s revenues from tax on incomes for the current year.
This correspondent is privy to secret documents within the CBR that contemplate applying this measure retrospectively to all taxpayers for all years of their working lives on the grounds that ignorance of the CBR’s long standing desire to issue new tax numbers each year is no defence against non-payment of the fee for a new tax number. And if the CBR had been amiss in any one year and not demanded that taxpayers apply for a new number, taxpayers should have applied for one in any case. One senior member is on record as having suggested that, in order to guard against the fluctuations in income from this major source of tax revenues in future years, taxpayers should be asked to pay the Annual New Number Fee in advance for the average working life of fifty years. In this way, early death of a taxpayer, war, drought, pestilence or other act of God would not be allowed to come in the way of steady accumulation of tax revenues and the satisfaction of the donor agencies.
Amongst other measures reviewed at a series of high level meetings, the Chairman of the CBR conceded that they had actively considered implanting a new tax number gene into fertilized eggs in the wombs of all expectant mothers in the country. Under the gene implantation scheme, every member of the population would have had a base tax number at birth. At each birthday, the number one would be added to this base, thus automatically generating a new tax number every year for each taxpayer, and saving CBR the effort of having to hire foreign consultants to generate new numbers each year. However, this scheme had to be abandoned, not only because of the high incidence of cousin marriages that could have created duplicate numbers, but also because consultation with the Minister of Population Planning revealed that, on account of the rampant Pakistani ‘Penchant for Proliferation’ index, within four years this numbering scheme would have grown beyond the number of boxes available for inscription of the taxpayer’s number on the CBR’s annual return form.
The concerned official also declared the CBR’s unwillingness to print new forms given that it already had a stockpile of 3.5 billion forms that it had printed several years back at a cheap rate, on surplus crimson toilet paper left over from the Korean War, and donated to Pakistan for its part in the War of the Mujahideen in Afghanistan. The Chairman pointed out that as one of the two and a half incentives for Pakistan, for joining the War of the Terrorists in Afghanistan, the visiting Secretary of State had said that he would look into the leftover light green toilet paper from the Vietnam War and see if it could be used as part of the payback for good behaviour. This will help the CBR to print new forms with a lot more boxes for the new numbers.
After being given a draft copy of this report the CBR had protested that it should not be singled out as the only irresponsible agency having difficulties with numbers, certificates and the like. If, they say, NADRA has been given the opportunity to mess around with electoral rolls, printing, misprinting and reprinting them several times at billions of rupees in cost to the taxpayer, which the CBR is now having to recover from taxpayers partially through demands for them to apply for new numbers, why should the CBR, which is not essentially an IT oriented organization, be blamed because it has not been able to come up with a one-time numbering scheme in only its fifth attempt?
An agitated Chairman pointed out that he, himself, had not yet been issued with a new ID card by NADRA, and that his application had been returned to him four times already! Once because the thoughtlessly issued application form had been withdrawn, next time because the form did not have a rectangular rubber stamp with a squiggle in black ballpoint pen at the bottom of the paper. The third time because his photograph had been taken on an aquamarine background rather than a sky blue one. And the last time because his thumb impression was placed at 88.5 degrees to the vertical rather than 88.7 degrees. Then, when he had been told that his card was ready and would be delivered to his PA, it was delivered. But the card had his PA’s wife’s photograph on it, the thumb impression of the PA and a bar code for a 250 gram packet of a well known detergent!
At the end of the interview the Chairman was seen walking off hand in hand with the Head of one of the institutions with which we began this report, allotting new NTNs to bystanders and asking if they had received the new ID card from NADRA.
GIVEN that there are few mental asylums in the country and even those can barely accommodate their existing inmates, it is a good thing that not many of us pay taxes and therefore have to be registered with the CBR!
