A VGC audit of the gap between efficient revenue collection, public-service value and the accountability demanded from the citizen.
No government can function without revenue. The democratic argument is therefore not that taxation should disappear. The harder question is what happens after the money is collected.
Citizens are required to comply with increasingly structured tax and digital systems. The state, in return, is expected to convert public revenue into infrastructure, security, education, healthcare, administration and other public goods.
The VGC question is simple: does the accountability mechanism operate in both directions?
If you live in Kerala, the KSEB analogy is immediately understandable: a citizen depends on a system with very limited ability to switch providers. The service is essential, the bill must be paid, and the user's practical leverage is limited.
The analogy becomes useful when applied to taxation: citizens cannot opt out of the state's revenue system and choose a competing government. That makes service quality and institutional accountability more important, not less.
The citizen cannot choose a competing state when public administration disappoints.
If choice is limited, correction, transparency and service standards become essential safeguards.
The argument is not that taxation and electricity supply are literally the same thing. It is that the power relationship creates a useful systems analogy.
The original draft describes taxation as an exchange of value: citizens contribute revenue and expect public infrastructure and services in return. The problem arises when citizens experience multiple layers of payment without being able to identify corresponding service quality.
India's current income-tax structure includes a 30% top marginal rate under the relevant regimes, but that does not mean every working professional pays 30%. GST rates also vary by goods and services; 18% and 28% are among the notified rates, not a universal GST rate.
That distinction actually strengthens the article. The argument does not need an inflated “nearly half of your income” calculation to make its point. The stronger question is: what total burden does an ordinary citizen experience across income, consumption, property, transport and essential services — and what public value is visible on the ground?
The draft's strongest everyday example is transport. A citizen can encounter taxation when purchasing a vehicle, taxes or charges connected to registration and road use, highway tolls, and then additional taxes when paying privately to repair damage or maintain the vehicle.
The systems issue is not that every individual charge is illegitimate. Each may have a separate legal or fiscal rationale. The issue is whether the citizen experiences the combined system as paying repeatedly while receiving unreliable infrastructure.
The same structural concern appears in healthcare and education. Citizens may contribute to public systems through taxation while also purchasing private alternatives when they perceive public capacity, access or quality as insufficient.
Tax-funded public provision may coexist with private insurance, private hospitals and out-of-pocket spending.
Families may contribute to public education through taxation while paying private-school or private-coaching costs from post-tax income.
Calling this automatically “double taxation” would be too broad. The more precise VGC framing is double financial exposure: the citizen may fund a public system and separately purchase private protection when the public service does not meet perceived needs.
This is where the draft's central frustration becomes strongest: asymmetry.
Tax administration is increasingly digital. Filing, payments, notices and compliance processes can be automated or system-driven. Citizens can face consequences for missing statutory requirements.
But what happens when the state's own administrative machinery fails?
Deadlines, filings, documentation, digital records, notices and statutory consequences.
Delayed files, missing records, fragmented databases, office visits and unresolved administrative errors.
The original draft describes the resulting experience as a “one-way mirror”: the citizen sees the consequences of non-compliance clearly, while consequences for administrative failure may be less visible or less immediate.
Digital governance can make revenue collection and administrative processing faster. But a faster digital interface is not automatically the same thing as better governance.
A dashboard can tell the state how many returns were filed, how much revenue was collected or how many processes moved through a system. It cannot, by itself, tell whether the citizen experienced the underlying public service as reliable, accessible or fair.
If the state wants to demonstrate value for money, the audit should move beyond collection numbers.
The answer is not to abolish taxation. Modern states require public revenue. Nor is the answer to pretend that every public service failure means the entire state provides no value.
The structural reform is more demanding: make the accountability loop visible in both directions.
Citizen → Tax → Government → Public Service → Outcome → Citizen.
If the loop breaks after the tax is collected, the system may still be financially efficient while becoming operationally weak.
The taxpayer is not merely a source of revenue. The taxpayer is the citizen who finances the system.
Efficient collection matters. Digital compliance matters. But neither should become a substitute for measuring what happens after the money enters the system.
The real VGC demand is simple: accountability must flow both ways.
Until government performance is measured with the same seriousness applied to taxpayer compliance, the citizen can reasonably ask the hardest question in the system: