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
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“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.
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—Bible: Hebrew, Proverbs 3:13-18.
“The local is a shabby thing. There’s nothing worse than bringing us back down to our own little corner, our own territory, the radiant promiscuity of the face to face. A culture which has taken the risk of the universal, must perish by the universal.”
—Jean Baudrillard (b. 1929)
“Most governments have been based, practically, on the denial of equal rights of men ... ours began, by affirming those rights. They said, some men are too ignorant, and vicious, to share in government. Possibly so, said we; and, by your system, you would always keep them ignorant, and vicious. We proposed to give all a chance; and we expected the weak to grow stronger, the ignorant wiser; and all better, and happier together.”
—Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)