Tax experts in Pakistan commented critically on the IMF’s December mission on the country’s tax system. Lawyers Huzaima Bukhari and Dr. Ikramul Haq billed the meetings to devise a strategy to enhance revenue as a “closed door session of bureaucrats and their handpicked so-called experts, excluding the real stakeholders.” They accused the Fund of being incapable of even dressing wounds let alone “treating the cancerous growth in the body of [the] patient.” They also lambasted the IMF for imposing “all kinds of proposals for regressive taxation but never [forcing] the government of Pakistan to levy taxes where these are due”.

imposing all kinds of proposals for regressive taxation