Skip to main content

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.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

No Spam Please :)

Popular posts from this blog

The Daily Office Commute Circus

Wake up in the morning to let the maid in and pick up the daily and milk. Get ready for office in record time. Gulp down breakfast. Run down the hill. Flail arms madly hoping to flag down a willing rickshaw driver. Coax the driver to drive fast AND safe. Reach the station and cross tracks looking out for oncoming trains and humans. Squeeze into a packed train. Either stand on someone else’s toes or be stood on your own toes by some one else. Watch helplessly as one’s bag is tossed with the aim of a Jonty Rhodes onto the luggage rack (assuming that one has found a Samaritan to do the job AND there is space on the luggage rack). Feel like a straw in a whirlpool as you are tossed around in the crowd of people getting off before you. Finally reach one’s destination and just wait to ‘flow’ out with the swell…
1 comment
Read more

Seth & Karkaria

Why do people write in with their personal problems to the myriad agony aunt columns in newspapers? If I have a problem, wouldn't it be simpler to go to some one I trust, some one who would know more about my past - my case history so to say - and thus be better qualified to give me advice? I have tremendous respect for Mr Suhel Seth... but if he thinks he is answering queries put in by actual people on his column Survival Strategies in the Graphiti (the Sunday Magazine supplement of Kolkata's leading English language newspaper,  The Telegraph ) I think he is mistaken... Read some of the questions and answers that appeared in last Sunday's (29th March 2009) edition. (see them on The Telegraph site here ). You'll find Name and address have been withheld in all cases Nearly in all cases, the questions asked are leading ones The answers attributed to Mr Seth hardly seem like solutions... the nameless and homeless persons asking the questions would be liable to be...
1 comment
Read more

The Secret

Roni was in a rush. His chemistry tutor had taken an extra half an hour of class today to explain about metals and non-metals. As if he needed the explanation. He had been raiding his elder sister Tanni's table for over 3 years now, studying the notes and solving the problems she would give to her engineering students while they struggled. Roni was in class 10, but he felt like he was ready for college. But that's not why he was in a rush today. He was late for his daily fix. Every day of the week he used to visit a different tutor straight after school. Staying in a small town filled with educators meant that nothing, especially teachers, was too far away. But every place, and everyone, has secrets, and he had discovered many nooks and crannies where, on his way home, he could indulge in the cigarette procured from the school peon in exchange for a part of his tiffin - usually a snack like an apple or some mithai, or the joint received from the school bully as reward fo...
Post a Comment
Read more