Tax Revenue of Local Governments
Taxation is the most appropriate way to fund local government services. Own local taxes make the revenue base of lower tier local governments potentially autonomous and strong. Own taxes are directly demanded and collected by Village Panchayats, Municipalities and Corporations which are remaining very close to the people. District and Block Panchayats do not have the authority to collect taxes and have no consequent expenditure autonomy as that of others. They more or less function as spending agents of higher-level governments. A three tier fragmented tax system in a federal system of governance has many inherent disadvantages. Decentralization of taxing powers hence may not fully match the decentralized expenditure, arising out of many institutions transferred as part of the functional devolution, in the new local government system.
Read more about this topic: Local Government Finance In Kerala
Famous quotes containing the words tax, revenue, local and/or governments:
“But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even look up to heaven, but was beating his breast and saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’”
—Bible: New Testament, Luke 18:13.
“If you tax too high, the revenue will yield nothing.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“To see ourselves as others see us can be eye-opening. To see others as sharing a nature with ourselves is the merest decency. But it is from the far more difficult achievement of seeing ourselves amongst others, as a local example of the forms human life has locally taken, a case among cases, a world among worlds, that the largeness of mind, without which objectivity is self- congratulation and tolerance a sham, comes.”
—Clifford Geertz (b. 1926)
“It has become necessary to call the attention of European governments to a fact which is apparently so insignificant that the governments seem not to notice it. The fact is this: an entire people is being annihilated. Where? In Europe. Are there witnesses? One witness, the entire world. Do the governments see it? No.”
—Victor Hugo (1802–1885)