How people surrender their benefits to the greater good of the country when it is in financial crisis is manifest from the report "More tax please, we are rich Germans" that appeared recently in a daily. A group of rich Germans have launched a call for levying of wealth tax to help their country bounce back from its present economic crisis. As one said, he had "a lot of money I do not need". Our country at the moment is passing through a far more serious financial crisis than Germany. Are our wealthy industrialists/businessmen/tradesmen, who do not hesitate spending millions on the Aqiqas and weddings of their offspring in the wink of an eye also willing to do something for the country. Perhaps, they would offer the government to start paying again the wealth tax that was abolished by the Musharraf government in 2002? The wealth-tax is functioning successfully in the neighboring India and Bangladesh and used to bring in government kitty at least Rs. 15 billion annually when abolished in Pakistan. Quantitatively, the wealth tax was levied low, only about 2.5% and that too on those assets which were not subjected to Zakat. So it was not too pinching to the business community who never agitated against it. However, its levy was a sort of check on accumulation of assets through black money. This check now removed, it has encouraged flow of illegal hordes of assets in the country. The tax to GDP ratio in Pakistan for the last so many years is static at around 9% which is probably the lowest in the world. This ratio under the present tax system can not improve unless new taxes like wealth tax are restored and levied. -D. M. BALOACH, Alberta, October 30.