Naresh, Gautam.
Concept of fiscal capacity of municipal governments: Issues and remedial measures for revenue augmentation - Nagarlok: Quarterly Journal of Urban Affairs - 52(2), Api-Jun, 2020: p.1-42
Globally, the role of local governments is very important in ensuring access to goods and basic services even to the marginal citizens. In India also, all the local governments, both rural and municipal, numbering about 267,428, are supposed to perform such activities. They are empowered with the constitutional status as third-tier governments in its federal structure. The 73rd and 74th Amendment Acts (CAA) to the Constitution were passed in 1992, according to which respective states were mandated to assign functional responsibilities to them as per the indicative lists in the Constitution in their jurisdictions. The CAA mandated the states to constitute their State Finance Commissions after every five years. In their recommendations they were mandated inter alia to determine on the taxes, duties, tolls and fees which may be assigned to, or appropriated to the local governments. The state legislatures were free to accept, reject or modify the recommendations. This has led to an array of non-uniformity not only at inter-state level but also at intra-state level. The issue remains that how effectively the local governments manage to exploit optimally their fiscal capacity. For this, they have to understand how to rationalise different components of it, namely, sources of revenues and capacity building of their administrators. The suggestions have come from various commissions, committees and study reports of national and international levels. - Reproduced
Area-based system; Central finance commission (CFC), State finance commission (SFC); Constitutional amendment Act (CAA)
Concept of fiscal capacity of municipal governments: Issues and remedial measures for revenue augmentation - Nagarlok: Quarterly Journal of Urban Affairs - 52(2), Api-Jun, 2020: p.1-42
Globally, the role of local governments is very important in ensuring access to goods and basic services even to the marginal citizens. In India also, all the local governments, both rural and municipal, numbering about 267,428, are supposed to perform such activities. They are empowered with the constitutional status as third-tier governments in its federal structure. The 73rd and 74th Amendment Acts (CAA) to the Constitution were passed in 1992, according to which respective states were mandated to assign functional responsibilities to them as per the indicative lists in the Constitution in their jurisdictions. The CAA mandated the states to constitute their State Finance Commissions after every five years. In their recommendations they were mandated inter alia to determine on the taxes, duties, tolls and fees which may be assigned to, or appropriated to the local governments. The state legislatures were free to accept, reject or modify the recommendations. This has led to an array of non-uniformity not only at inter-state level but also at intra-state level. The issue remains that how effectively the local governments manage to exploit optimally their fiscal capacity. For this, they have to understand how to rationalise different components of it, namely, sources of revenues and capacity building of their administrators. The suggestions have come from various commissions, committees and study reports of national and international levels. - Reproduced
Area-based system; Central finance commission (CFC), State finance commission (SFC); Constitutional amendment Act (CAA)