Friday, July 7, 2017
Monday, January 14, 2013
Key themes discussed in the book
CONTENTS
Chapter 1 Introduction
Paying Taxes: A Matter of Money or Mind?
1.1
Visible and invisible
taxes
1.2
Visible and invisible benefits
1.3
What is income tax compliance?
1.4
Why should I pay?
1.5 .......... if I don’t get any benefit?
1.6 .......... if what I pay is siphoned
off?
1.7 .......... if what I pay is
inefficiently applied?
1.8 .......... if it is such a hassle to
follow the procedures?
1.9 ...........if it so difficult
for me to understand the legal intricacies
1.10 .... if it is so
harassing to interact with the tax department?
1.11......if I am unduly
audited and investigated upon?
1.12 ....f it is too costly for me
to comply?
1.13 .....if the people around me
don’t pay?
1.14 .....if my non-payment does not
benefit society but only gives me gains?
1.15 Tax evasion? Is it a serious
offence?
1.16 Is tax
evasion immoral?
1.17 In search
of answers
1.18 A Matter of time
1.19 A Matter of money
1.20 A Matter of power
1.21 A Matter of
mind: Towards an economic-sociology of taxation
Chapter 2 A Matter of Time? The History of Taxation
2.1 Global perspectives
2.2 Wars and the income tax
2.3 History and the tax revolts
2.4 Taxation and Colonialism
2.5 Indian tax
history
2.6 The dominant
cultural and religious determinants:
System before the advent of the British
2.7 The exclusive colonial-economic
orientation: Taxation during the British period
2.8 The predominant social dimensions:
Taxation in post-independent India
2.9 Creating history
Chapter 3 A Matter of Money? The Economic of Taxation
3.1 The processual dimensions
3.2 Mobilizing revenue in a dynamic economy
3.3 Emergence of market economy
and issues in public
goods delivery
3.4 Taxation as the instrument
to resolve the resource crunch
3.5 Deadweight cost of taxation
and optimal tax theory
3.6 Inability of Laffer Curve to
explain tax behaviour
3.7 Do tax rates have an impact
on tax revenue?
3.8 The tax revenue, GDP and the
per-capita income
3.9 Tax reforms across the world
3.10 Tax reforms in India
3.11 The analytical dimensions
3.12 Taxation and tax compliance: The
economist
explanation
3.13 Economic-criminological
approach
3.14 Economic-behavioural
approach
3.15 Deterrence factors
3.16 The tax compliance game: The
agency models and
general equilibrium
models
3.17 Economic Analysis of taxation: An appraisal
Chapter 4 A Matter of Power? The Politics of Taxation
4.1 Ideologies of taxation
4.2 Politics, equity and
taxation
4.3 Contractarian perspectives
in taxation
4.4 Performance of the state and
the tax compliance
4.5 Nature of political system
and country-specific tax
Behaviour
4.6 Political context of tax
policy
4.7 Political popularity
4.8 Tax incentives and pressure
groups
4.9 Ideological conflict
Political ideology and economic
Necessity
4.10 Vote banks and cash banks
4.11 Institutionalization of
political financing
4.12 Anti-tax political parties
4.13 India
4.14 The political context of
taxation
Chapter 5 A Matter of Approach? The Sociology of Taxation
5.1 Sociological and social psychological
orientations
5.2 Towards an appropriate
research focus
5.3 Various research methods
5.4 Disadvantages of using
secondary data
5.5 Shortcomings of surveys and
questionnaires
5.6 Experimental studies
5.7 Other methods
5.8 Semi-structured interview and
case study
5.9 Two empirical studies-
Introduction
Chapter 6 A Matter
of Mind?
Tax attitudes and tax
behavioural perceptions in
a
developing country
6.1 Attitudes and its relation
to behaviour
6.2 Tax attitudes
6.3 Statement specific responses
indicating attitudes
6.4 Perceptions on the role of the
state and role performance
of the state
6.5 Perceptions of the rational
of taxation and perceived
Fairness of the state
6.6 The changing role of the
state in the globalized world
6.7 Attitudes about tax compliance and evasion
6.8 Attitudes and perceptions
regarding tax laws and
tax administration
fairness
6.9 Perception of reasons for
low tax compliance
6.10 Respondents’ ranking for the strategies
to increase
compliance
6.11 Perception of self tax
behaviour
6.12 Past experience with the
income tax department
6.13 Taxpayer service
6.14 Insights from the study
6.15 Attitude and perception
about the State and
the
Governance
6.16 Attitude
and perception about the tax evasion of others
6.17 Attitude
towards state and governance and respondents’
Perceived tax behaviour
6.18 Current tax
behaviour of the respondents and their
past tax
experiences
6.19 Analysis
with reference to background variables
6.20 Insights in
brief
Chapter 7 A Matter of Stick?
Nabbing the
evader: The trajectory of Indian income
Tax enforcement
7.1 The tax enforcement measures
in India
7.2 The power of search and seizure
7.3 The search and seizure
procedure as per Income tax Act
7.4 The objectives and focus of
the study
7.5 The conversational interview
7.6 Duration of search
7.7 Seizure of valuables
7.8 The interrogation, the
disclosure and the retraction
7.9 Analysis of the perception of
conduct of search
7.10 Behaviour of the search party
7.11 Confidentiality of the search
action
7.12 Conduct of the search: What
the officials say?
7.13 Perception of post-search
experiences
7.14 Appeals against search
assessments
7.15 Punitive actions after the
search
7.16 Financial strains consequent to
the search
7.17 Emotional disturbances
consequent to the search
7.18 Health disturbances
consequent to the search
7.19 Familial and social support
7.20 Why I was searched? Perceived
reasons for search
7.21 Why I was non-compliant?
Perceived reasons for income
suppression / tax
non-compliance
7.22 Relationships after the
search
7.23 Social exposure and activity
before and after search
7.24 Religious activities before
and after search
7.25 Responses about the
departmental proceedings after
the search
7.26 Income Tax Department
proximity before and
after search
7.27 Anxiety of tax matters after
completion of
all
proceedings
7.28
Perceived impact of search on
financial well being,
business management and fiscal discipline
7.29
Perceived pre-search tax
awareness perception and post-
search
tax awareness
Chapter 8 Tax Compliance and
Tax Enforcement: Problems
and
Prospects
8.1
Procedural compliance and
substantive compliance
8.2
The problem of enforcement
8.3
Tax payer –Tax authority game
8.4
Inter group comparison and
fairness perception
8.5
The framing and overflowing
8.6
Multiple determinants of tax
attitudes and resultant cognitive dissonance
8.7
Endogenous and exogenous
stimuli
8.8
The evasion-avoidance ambiguity
8.9
Reciprocity as a factor and
perception of corruption
8.10 Nature of state and taxpayer behavioural response
8.11Information on tax compliance in the public domain
Chapter 9 Taxation in a
Globalized World: Transitional and
Transnational Challenges
9.1 Is
globalization good for the tax systems?
9.2 The tax
competition
9.3 Wither
welfare state?
9.4 The need
to see beyond tax rates
9.5 Relevance
for a Global Tax Research and Analysis
Organization
9.6 Varying
degrees of tax compliance
9.7 Making
People Pay
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Friday, January 29, 2010
Before you buy this book
This
book is not for every one. This is for those who want to live in a civilized
state. The book is not aimed to proselytize for a tax state. Nor it advocates a
tax haven. And least about a prospective tax-free heaven. It only tries to answer certain mundane but
frequently asked questions: Why pay taxes? What prompts people to hate
taxes? What happens if not paid? How to
make the payment less painful? Is
paying taxes, a matter of money or matter of mind?
Observing people and their behaviour and understanding the patterns that
shape their decisions were of immense interest to me since early in my life. I
tried to comprehend and appreciate the principles of and practices in natural
sciences, where individuals and their environment were dissected to understand
their inherent properties, composition and factors of sustenance. Even while
engaging in experiments in the chemistry lab, I was puzzled at the rationale of
duality created in knowledge as natural sciences and social sciences. Is
natural science really ‘natural’? Does social science has more to do with
nature than ‘social’? Natural science had lost its naturalness the moment man
started acting on it. I found that the distinction between both the sciences
were increasingly getting blurred. As most of the changes happening in the
world are due to human interventions,
one needs a social science perspective to understand them. It was thus clear to
me that, to understand an event or a situation one has to know the people
behind it. And in order to understand people, one needs to understand their
attitudinal and behavioural patterns and the forms relationships take in an
interactive environment.
The above paradigm switch in my thought process might be an important
factor that propelled me to turn to the study of social sciences. The decade
long training and reading in social sciences were indeed stimulating. The
opportunities to learn the finer theoretical and methodological themes that
dominated the intelligentsia in different periods of history and different
cultural contexts have enriched my understanding. I sincerely wished to be an
arm chair academician at this point of time.
Gradually I realized that it is easy to dissect individuals and groups
in the cozy libraries, seminar halls and project reports. It is not that
comfortable to face people as they grapple with issues and challenges that
emerge day by day. That is what I found when I joined the Indian civil
services. My job as a taxman was not without challenges. I was seriously
involved in the exercise of deepening of tax base, presuming that figures
scribbled in the returns represented just a portion of the actual. But within a few years I realized that
the tax potentiality lies not in the microscopic minority within but the vast
majority outside the system. The road to widening the taxpayer base can never
be smooth unless there is appropriate policy intervention, infrastructural
transformation and effective service delivery. The efforts of the government in
this regard started bearing fruits with every little step in the right
direction. But, it was not clear why a country with considerable tax elasticity
and tax potentiality found it difficult to attract more people to its tax rolls
and gain more money to the direct taxes kitty.
I started my search for the answers several years back. Slowly I realized
the need for a systematic macro analysis of the issues. I was in fact plunging
myself to what many call ‘research’ on the subject. Is tax aversion unique to
some countries? My analysis proved not. There are several historical, political
and sociological factors that deter people from paying taxes globally. It is
not just economic factors that determine tax compliance as it is widely thought
off. Attempt in this book was to analyze those factors. Theoretical analyses
given in the book were aimed to provide an understanding of the subject of tax
compliance with a global perspective at the macro level. It threw open certain
valid questions. Why people in some countries comply better than others? Why
tax evasion is not frowned upon in some countries and disgraceful in some other
countries?
Any theoretical analysis on the behaviour of people is incomplete
without analysis of primary data. Any statistical analysis based on secondary
data cannot translate finer emotional and sociological facts in the realm of
individuals and groups. An empirical analysis is imperative if one has to
understand the why and how of tax non-compliance. A scientific analysis of the
attitudes and perceptions of a sample of taxpayers can provide valuable
insights into not only issues such as tax compliance and honesty at the
personal level but also about interconnected social traits such as trust,
reciprocity and altruism at the societal level. A sample from a developing
country like India
A unique attempt was also made here to understand tax evasion and tax
enforcement through a study of tax evaders (or who were branded so) themselves.
As a researcher, I was really surprised at the frank and genuine responses of
the sample of tax payers who were searched by the Indian Income Tax Department.
The interviews and case studies with them have, without exception, cumulatively
and intellectually enriched me as they helped me to understand the behavioural
pattern, attitudes, perceptions and expectations of taxpayers in general.
It would be bliss if one can get rid of all taxes. But in a world of
widespread inequity and inequality, income taxation is an economic-sociological
instrument for overall well being of the people. Countries like India
Please
take note of this disclaimer. All views expressed in this book are my personal
views. The book is not from a taxman or a civil servant but from a social
researcher. The sole aim of the book is
to provide a new analytical framework in the study of and approach towards tax
evasion and tax enforcement.
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