Many people of this country are reluctant to declare their true annual income to the tax authorities for a variety of reasons. The number of taxpayers , therefore, in the country continues to remain dismally low. Only the government servants and those getting their monthly wages through cheque are not in a position to hide their real income from the governments and they get taxed in case their earnings come within the ambit of taxable income. Most of the people involved in small scale trade earn more than the middle level bureaucrats but they never file their income tax returns nor any income tax officer ever asks them to do so.
The common public perception is that the governments, more often than not, do not spend the taxpayers’ money on the public welfare projects. There is a strong feeling ofpublic distrust in government on this score. The common man also feels that the governments never tax the filthy rich to the extent they need to be taxed and no serious effort has been made by any government hitherto to document the country’s economy without which the real income of the elite class would never be known. Unless the governments religiously follow the dictum that from everybody according to his capacity, a fair taxation system simply cannot be enforced in the country.
The present government ought to restore the lost confidence of the people by taking concrete steps in recovering the hefty bank loans from the politically influential persons during the past three or four decades which they have gobbled up by getting them written off.
- Latest
- Trending
