Growing Tax Compliance: Big Questions on #MyTaxHoliday | Nation at 9

In a letter from 1789, U.S founding father Benjamin Franklin wrote 'our new constitution is now established, and has an appearance that promises permanency, but in this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes. In fact, it was the cause of taxation without representation which was the ideological underpinning of the American Revolution. The U.S was the first to implement the concept of income tax as we understand it today. 3% of all income greater than 800 dollars was charged to help pay for the civil war. The Egyptian Pharoahs taxed cooking oil, that's where the British got the idea to tax salt in India; impose a duty on something that everyone has to use as a way of making money for the government. Taxation was always a portion of trade or agricultural produce. Julius Caesar imposed a 1 percent sales tax in Rome. 5 percent was taxed in case of inheritances special taxes from the Romans to medieval Europe were applied in war time or for the construction of great castles. The Americans fought till the 1990s to abolish an estate tax that became infamously became called the death tax. The tax your family had to pay if you died. It's no coincidence that our highest income tax slab today is 30%. That's what Sher Shah Suri has fixed as the fair share of land revenue. So how much should you pay the government? All of us now pay GST on everything except fuel. A very tiny percentage of 4.7 crore people in this country file income tax returns. That's 3% of India. About 1.5% of India pays income taxes. Yet that income tax is 1/5th of the government's revenue. We're in election season. India's salaried class that pays the host of income tax has patiently dealt with demonetisation and sky high fuel taxes to fund the development of this country. So what will they now get? There is a debate going on whether the government can do a huge, unprecedented step of declaring an income tax holiday for the next 1 year. Imagine, no income tax for any of us for one year? It'll cost 3.5 lakh crore. Is such a huge move possible, affordable or economic hubris?