Intersectoral Tax Burdens in Pakistan: A Critical Review of Existing Evidence and Some New Estimates

Abstract

The study has two objectives: to evaluate existing empirical work on the subject of sectoral tax burdens, and to present alternative estimates of relative tax capacity and tax burden for the farm and non-farm sectors during the Seventies. The result, indicate that whereas the agricultural sector as a whole was overtaxed compared to the non-agriculture sector, the higher income groups in the farm sector were substantially undertaxed as compared to their urban counterparts. This fact reflects the extreme repressiveness of the agrarian tax structure in the absence of an effective direct tax on agricultural income.