Understanding the relationship between fiscal deficit, taxation, and government spending in India

Abstract

The budget deficit of a country is the situation where the expenses of the government are greater than its income (Barone, 2021). This means that the income generated by the government from its direct and indirect tax sources like income tax, corporate tax, GST etc. are not sufficient to cover its expenses. Hence, in a situation of budget deficit, the central government of the country need to borrow funds from various sources to meet its expenditure outlay. These sources can be internal to the country like issuing treasury bills, treasury notes and treasury bonds or can be external to the country like borrowing from different external entities like other governments, private organizations etc (Adkins, 2021). In India, the government generally issues securities known as Government Securities, and also funds through external sources which include international organisations like the World Bank and the IMF amongst others. The structure of the report is as follows: Firstly, we explain the current context of the economy in detail and have analysed the revenue and expenditure sides of the Central Government over 2020-2021. Then we move on to the crux of the report: the mathematical model simulating the additional burden on the taxpayer in the coming future. Finally, we have tried to summarise our findings and have tried to propose an alternative tax structure for the improvement of the economy.