Pakistan, June 27 -- Pakistan's Budget 2026-27 has once again triggered the familiar debate. Are tax rates too high? Has the salaried class received enough relief? Are businesses paying more? Should the government have imposed additional taxes or reduced expenditure instead?

These are legitimate questions. Yet they all overlook a more fundamental issue.

Perhaps Pakistan's biggest tax problem is no longer the tax rate.

Perhaps it is the cost of collecting taxes.

That may sound like an unusual proposition. After all, taxation is expected to impose a cost on the taxpayer. What is rarely discussed is the cost imposed on the economy to administer, comply with, and enforce the tax system.

Economists have a name for this. They call it the c...