The Social Currency

Value Added Tax  The value added tax (VAT) is a method of tax collection as well as name of the state level tax ( at present ) in India. A tax collected at every stage of value addition, i.e. either by production or distribution is known as value added tax. The name itself suggests that this tax is collected on the value addition (i.e. production).   Production of goods or services is nothing but stages of the value addition where production of goods is done by the industrialists or manufacturers. But these goods require value addition by different service providers/ producers (the agents, the wholesalers and the retailers) before they reach the consumers. From the production to the level of sale, there are many points where value is added in all goods.   VAT method of tax collection is different from the non-VAT method in the sense that it is imposed and collected at different point of value addition chain, i.e. multi-point tax collection. That is why there is...

  Planned And Mixed Economy Independent India was declared to be a planned and a mixed economy. India needed national planning; it was decided by the political leadership almost a decade before independence. India was not only facing regional disparities at the level of resources but inter-regional disparities were also prevalent, since centuries. Mass poverty could only be remedied once the government started the process of economic planning. Economic planning was thus considered an established tool of doing away with such disparities. Emphasis On the Public Sector The state was to be given an active and dominant role in the economy; it was very much decided by the time India became independent. There were no doubts about it in the minds of the people who formed the dominant political force at the time. Naturally, there was going to be a giant structure of the government-controlled enterprises to be known as the public sector undertakings (PSUs). Criticism aside, there wer...