By Desmond A. Nartey
A notable economist once joked that the two certainties in life are death and taxes. Now how much more ominous can that get. But the concept of taxation plays a critical and necessary role in policy formulation and economic development. Throughout the history of human existence tax policy has been used both as a development tool as well as a vehicle to engineer social and economic change. Tax revenue has been used to build bridges, hospitals, schools etc, to improve social welfare, to influence the location of business enterprises and industry, to redistribute income from the more to the less endowed and also to improve consumption and mitigate social tension. Most important of all, taxation has always been a very compliant tool for underwriting war efforts and ensuring national security. Consequently, to try to run an economy without taxation would be analogous to trying to drive a car without fuel.
According to a 2009 Organization for Economic Cooperation a...