Let us get real, abolish all taxes

Secondly, are voters so gullible that three years of whipping by the government will be forgotten if there is one year of applying balm? Are voters so easily tricked? Should they be?

Taxation is defined as a lawful levy by the state on the property of its citizens. A levy does not become lawful just because the state orders it. It has to be just, fair, reasonable and proportionate to the standards of the people. Socialist countries taxing the wealthy into poverty is not just, any more than capitalist countries helping the wealthy to become more wealthy without heed to the means they employ.

Unfortunately India’s record has been to see the budget as an instrument with which to torture citizens. The habit was developed during the old unlamented days of socialism. Even a congenital non-socialist like Morarji Desai used the torture machine with great relish.

Habits die hard, so post-Narasimha Rao budget makers also used taxation as a first resort. They never understood the point that when taxes are unreasonably high, human nature is to find ways to avoid paying them. In the end the governments end up with less revenue.

Kerala Government, for example, imposes the highest levels of tax on liquor. Result: The flow of smuggled liquor is the highest in Kerala and so is the sale of adulterated liquor. Reasonable tax levels would have meant more revenue for the Government and less ruined intestines and deaths for the people.

The problem is that the governments never try to cut costs. They ask the people to ‘‘save every drop of oil,’’ yet look at the security-escort-pilot convoys that carry VIPs all over the country. As many as 290 state legislators of Karnataka got ready to go on a foreign tour at taxpayers’ expense. A public interest petition and a High Court stay order were needed to stop their parasitism.

When their own expenses do not come down, politicians find an easy way out by making citizens pay more. The system of surcharges and cess levies have been turned into a farce. A surcharge by definition is a temporary affair. But surcharges raised to pay for the Bangladesh war, for example, stayed on as if for ever.

State governments levy beggar cess on the assurance that beggars will be rehabilitated. In no town has this happened. Actually beggars are now controlled and fielded by inter-state businessmen, but the beggar cess continues.

What the railway budget has proved this year is that even without picking passengers’ pockets, the railways can be managed. Likewise the general budget has shown that the country can run — complete with escort convoys and spendthrift legislators — without asking people to pay more every year.

In other words, it is possible for budgets to be civilised. But let’s hope they will be, above all, political. Then we may have a party that will abolish all taxes. That party is sure to win every election there is.