On Tax

Jug Suraiya has written an angst filled piece on his taxes due to the "Gormint" (of India presumably). Reading it does fill one with a sense of deja vu, having had such similar thoughts on many a previous occassion...

What I fail to understand is why can't there be just one tax (if at all there needs to be any tax at all). The government of any country should only be levying land revenue, based on the use that a particular piece of land is being put to. All its administrative and judicial functions should be at a fees (some thing that already happens in a number of cases - electricity is not free; roads come with a toll; education, health even RTI applications all come for a fee). This way, the government would transform itself more to a services company from a tax earning dragon, individual citizens would only pay for those aspects of the government services for which they are in need of and not for the entire government machinery... Also the government of India, especially, should do away with all the various loss making entities it owns, and there by reduce its salary bill...

I do understand that there are several functions of the Government that cannot be 'charged out' to citizens, defence, policing etc... It is for these cases that there should be an income tax...

What is totally unjustified are the plethora of other taxes, duties, surcharges and cess that one is forced to shell out... these should be done away with at the earliest.