Indian Tax Structure-An Analytical Perspective

Tax is the major source of revenue for the government, the development of any country's economy largely depends on the tax structure it has adopted. A Taxation Structure which facilitates easy of doing business and having no chance for tax evasion brings prosperity to a country's economy. On the other hand taxation structure which has provisions for tax evasion and the one which does not facilitate ease of doing business slows down the growth of country's economy. Therefore as taxation structure plays an important role in country's development. India has a well-developed tax structure. The power to levy taxes and duties is distributed among the three tiers of Government, in accordance with the provisions of the Indian Constitution. Indian taxation structure has gone through many reforms and still it is very far ahead from being a ideal taxation structure. Many problems like Tax Evasion, Reliance on indirect taxes, Black money, existence of parallel economy show that Indian taxation system requires some major reforms in the future ahead to address all this problems. In the following paper, the study is purely based on secondary data. Various figures are obtained from the different websites of government of India. It is seen that there are various number of taxes and different tax collection authorities in India. Also it is seen that there is major dependence on indirect taxes for tax collection than the direct taxes. Both Indirect taxes and Direct taxes have their own advantages and disadvantages.