Friday 29 August 2014

Income Tax should be abolished!

Countries across the world should stop collecting income tax and instead should slash a charge - call it service charge, amenities charge, infrastructure charge, education fees, security charge etc. Citizens should pay this charge on a monthly basis pro-rated on their income and they should get a receipt for the charges paid. Of course, slabs should be available and whose income falls below the lowest slab need not pay these service charges.

Income tax is too vague without any accountability or transparency in the way it is spent. Service charge will bring some amount transparency into this. Countries should publish an account statement or balance sheet on the receipts, payments, expense etc., like any other corporate. Like a stock, which is a my interest in a company, the charges I pay is my interest in my country. As of now countries that publish such a report or show some responsibility/accountability are almost nil. Corruption cannot be avoided without such a mechanism in place and citizen's will know what they are paying for.

Any other service that is not common to each and every citizen, the Government should charge separately for such a service. Anyway this is being paid in the form of bribe. Let's legalize it as a charge that goes to the Government rather than one's pocket who uses it for his personal purpose.

By seeing that my money is well spent, I will keep availing the service. On the contrary, I will stop paying for the service that is not well performed (I should be given this right) or I can take a legal recourse which is efficient enough to fix the service quickly.