In a country where every major expenditure and asset ownership -- from a cellphone bill to property tax to driving license to electricity usage to bank accounts to hotel stays to travel to school fees to traffic tickets -- is tied to your biometricaly verified ID card, how difficult could it be to ascertain someone's income -- and, hence, income tax?
How many more years will we continue to reimagine FBR or spend billions on "reform" -- before someone actually calls the bluff ...
May 9: passenger train hits trolleys left on track after engineering work at Queens Park. May 19: passenger train hits grinding machine left on track after engineering works near Redbridge.
Let me trace the timeline here because nobody's connecting it.
Step 1: Scrape the entire internet. Every book, every article, every conversation, every piece of art, every forum post. Do it without asking. Do it without paying.
Step 2: Train a model on all of it. Call it "artificial intelligence."
Step 3: Go to BlackRock's Infrastructure Summit and announce: "We see a future where intelligence is a utility, like electricity or water, and people buy it from us on a meter."
Step 3 is where you sell people's own knowledge back to them. On a meter.
They took the collective output of human thought, compressed it into a model, and now they want to charge you by the token to access a version of what you and everyone you know already created.
One Reddit user put it perfectly: "They stole all this data from us, the people, our life's work, creativity, art, by devouring the internet and blowing through all copyright laws. Now they want to sell it back to us in the form of a utility."
Imagine if someone photocopied every book in the public library, burned the library down, and then opened a subscription service for the copies.
That's the metered intelligence business model.
And they're pitching it to infrastructure investors as though they invented water.
Pakistan and many other emerging economies need to recognize the importance of sovereign AI.
Citizen and government data can easily be used against a country. Many public sector leaders and officials still do not understand the importance of investing in AI infrastructure; from chips and GPUs to locally deployed LLMs, SLMs, and sufficient energy capacity.
Imagine government officials uploading sensitive datasets to API-based or internet-hosted LLMs. Usage patterns and data traces rarely go unnoticed. What if any other hostile nation can have access to all the state's functioning and behaviourial patterns of it's citizens?
This is an area where @atomcamp is investing significant effort. On one hand, we train public officials in AI applications and sovereign AI. On the other hand, we advise governments on building safe and secure AI systems.
This is the moment to place greater focus on these issues to ensure digital and cognitive sovereignty.
If a non-salaried individual (Professional / Sole Proprietor / AOP etc) earns Rs. 1 Billion annually… how much income tax do they pay (as we did for companies in previous tweet)?
Let’s break it down 👇
---
🔹 Step 1: Normal Income Tax
For income above Rs. 5.6M, the slab is:
Tax = Rs. 1,610,000 + 45% of (Income − 5.6M)
For Rs. 1,000,000,000:
Excess income: 994,400,000
45% of excess: Rs. 447,480,000
Add base tax: 447,480,000 +1,610,000=
➡️ Rs. 449,090,000
---
🔹 Step 2: 10% Surcharge (Non-Salaried)
10% of 449,090,000 =
➡️ Rs. 44,909,000
---
🔹 Step 3: Total Tax (Before Super Tax)
449,090,000 + 44,909,000 =
➡️ Rs. 493,999,000
📌 Effective Tax Rate: 49.40%
---
🔹 Step 4: Super Tax (If Applicable)
If super tax of Rs. 100,000,000 applies (on high earners):
493,999,000 + 100,000,000 =
➡️ Rs. 593,999,000
📌 Effective Tax Rate: 59.40%
---
💬 Thoughts
A ~60% tax load on a professional who earns through skills, competence, hard work and honesty is extremely high — especially when indirect taxes are already everywhere.
Non-salaried individuals can claim expenses against income, which salaried people cannot which is a very big advantage over salaried. Even then, these tax rates are punishing.
And the biggest irony?
👉 Only the salaried class (and a tiny negligible portion of honest non-salaried taxpayers) actually pay this income tax.
Pakistan’s entire tax structure needs a serious overhaul.
✔️ Lower tax rates
✔️ Wider base
✔️ Fair treatment of all income groups
✔️ Incentives instead of punishment
Until then… expecting voluntary tax compliance is unrealistic.
🚨🚨🚨
SHO Shukar Ullah Khan of Wazirabad Thana Sadar just refused to file an FIR. He said that the parents of the girl came and gave a thumbprint stating they did not want any inquiry. However, the parents later said they were misled. The girl’s father is blind, and her mother was not in her senses at the time. Apart from that, both of them are unable to read and write
They both want an inquiry. Police are trying to spoil the case.
@OfficialDPRPP
Our Sincerest thanks to these Indian soldiers for uploading yet another IAF crash. #0_5Front
4th visual confirmation after the ones in Bathinda, Akhnoor, Pampore.
#PAFResponds
We Pakistanis are woefully ignorant of our enemy. Aman ka Tamasha brainworm have lulled our senses & we have slept walked into a country thats bent on eradication of nearly 700 million Muslims of the subcontinent if not beyond.
جاگ جاؤ، ورنہ ہماری داستاں بھی نہ ہوگی داستانوں میں
بھارت کے دو پائلٹ پاکستان کی تحویل میں ہیں۔ لیکن بھارت نے درخواست کی ہے کہ ان کو منظر عام پر نہ لایا جائے۔ بھارت چونکہ پاکستان کے چاچو کا لڑکا ہے اس لیے پاکستان بھارت کی یہ درخواست مان رہا ہے۔ بھارت نے تین ائیربیسز پر کروز میزائل کا حملہ کرکے ایک سکواڈرن لیڈر سمیت متعدد افراد کو نشانہ بنایا لیکن پاکستان اس کے باجود بھارت کی درخواست مان رہا ہے۔ سندھ طاس معاہدہ معطل ہے۔ پاکستان کے دریاوں کا پانی روکا گیا ہے لیکن ان پائلٹس کے بدلے وہ بھی نہیں کھولا جاسکتا۔
جھوٹ در جھوٹ در جھوٹ بولتے ہوئے اور پھیلاتے ہوئے پاکستان کے صحافیوں کو رتی برابر شرم نہیں آرہی۔
میڈیا احتیاط کا مظاہرہ کرے اور فیک نیوز دینے سے اجتناب کرے خبر کو کنفرم کرنے کے بعد نشر کرے اور پرانے فوٹیج پرانی تصویر آج کا کہہ کر چلانے سے اجتناب کرے۔
BREAKING: jury awards massive $167 million in punitive damages against spyware company NSO Group.
Precedent-setting win against the notorious #Pegasus spyware maker.
Congratulations to @WhatsApp on sticking this case through since 2019. Some thoughts 1/
The destruction of documents in the CPS relating to Starmer's tenure as DPP is itself extraordinary - emails and meeting records on the Assange, Savile, Janner and other cases gone.
Still more stunning, destroyed while the Tories were in office. The Deep State protecting Starmer and putting him eventually into power.
Please help us find M. Usman, He is missing since December 19th from
Rawalpindi (Punjab) #ZainabAlertApp
ZAINAB ALERT
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Please help us find Sehrish, She is missing since December 19th from Rawalpindi (Punjab) #ZainabAlertApp
ZAINAB ALERT
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Please help us find Kinza, She is missing since December 10th from Kasur (Punjab) #ZainabAlertApp#missingchildren
ZAINAB ALERT
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Please help us find Hasan, He is missing since December 1st from Karachi (Sindh) #ZainabAlertApp#missingchildren
ZAINAB ALERT
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👉Twitter https://t.co/4lbSNRHGmY
➡️Android https://t.co/T4K4DfJxNT
➡️https://t.co/pEyV1rOOsQ