If the complexity of a country's tax structure has a direct correlation with non-payment, then Pakistan would win a gold medal.

The South Asian country has no fewer than 37 government agencies levying more than 70 unique taxes on various goods and services -- the problem is only a fraction of the population ever pays it.

At the latest count, just 800,000 of the country's 180 million people paid taxes, and its budget deficit stood at a massive $17 billion, according to government figures.

Tactics designed to raise taxes have ranged from the standard - media campaigns aimed at getting shopkeepers to display their tax certificates, to the bizarre - groups of transvestites hired to 'shame' tax debtors into paying.

Now Pakistan's National Data Base and Registration Authority (NADRA) has weighed into the problem of endemic non-payment with what it hopes will be a permanent solution.

It aims to put every Pakistani adult into one of the world's largest multi-biometric databases.

"We have 452 static centers where people are coming and giving this data, we have 250 mobile vans, we have a motorcycle service, and we (even) have people up in the mountains -- skiers and mountaineers with man-pack units," says NADRA Chairman Tariq Malik whose mission it is to log every potential taxpayer in Pakistan.

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