Abstract:
This paper discusses the efforts by the Government of Pakistan to
implement a General Sales Tax (GST). First, a history of Pakistani tax
reform efforts is presented along with the reforms recommended by the
National Taxation Reforms Commission. After this, the design and
implementation of the GST is discussed followed by an analysis of the
political economy and provincial issues that arise in the process of
implementing the GST. Finally, the paper discusses various proposals
regarding the determination of the base for the GST. The paper concludes
that the splitting of the GST by sectors, given the perspective that the
1930’s style sales tax, is not sensible, and the Pakistani formulation is more
unstable than the assignment of the GST on goods.
