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Equity versus Ease in Indian Land Tax Policy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 November 2008

J. F. J. Toye
J. F. J. Toye
Affiliation:
Wolfson College, University of Cambridge
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Extract

One of the central choices that confronts designers of direct taxes is that of the precise combination of equity and administrative ease. Both equity and administrative ease are normally accepted as desirable objectives in the design of taxes. But the objectives conflict with each other. Equity requires a tax sufficiently flexible to adjust the size of the tax payment to the individual taxpayer's ability to pay. Administrative simplicity, by contrast, requires a tax where the due payment can be quickly and simply calculated, and promptly and conveniently collected. Thus tax designers face the painful dilemma of being able to achieve improvements in equity only by increasing the difficulty of tax administration, or, alternatively, of being able to reduce these difficulties only by accepting additional inequities.

Type
Articles
Information
Modern Asian Studies , Volume 12 , Issue 2 , April 1978 , pp. 285 - 305
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1978

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