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Conflict, Legitimacy and Government Reform: Equitable Allocation of ...

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54 KPI Congress XI<br />

Even though direct taxes like personal income tax are progressive, in<br />

reality only a small number <strong>of</strong> high income earners pay a high tax rate<br />

<strong>and</strong> since tax evasion is rampant, the government cannot fully collect<br />

personal income tax, rendering the progressive rate ineffectual (Supreeya,<br />

2001; Thanasai, 1994). Even though there are varied tax rates applied to<br />

different income brackets, ranging from 0%, 10%, 20%, 30% <strong>and</strong> 37%,<br />

in reality an average rate is only 5%.<br />

As a result, overall taxation system <strong>of</strong> Thail<strong>and</strong> is regressive rather<br />

than progressive.<br />

The government needs more revenue for production <strong>of</strong> public<br />

goods <strong>and</strong> provision <strong>of</strong> public services in order to effectively mitigate<br />

inequality. Most resources used by the government must come from<br />

duties <strong>and</strong> taxes. In developed countries, a proportion <strong>of</strong> taxes to GDP in<br />

percentage ranges around 40-50% but tax collection <strong>of</strong> Thail<strong>and</strong> is only<br />

17% <strong>of</strong> GDP, which is lower than middle-income countries like<br />

Thail<strong>and</strong>, e.g. Venezuela <strong>and</strong> Turkey (see Table 6). Moreover, the<br />

proportion <strong>of</strong> personal income tax is very low, that is, only 13 per cent <strong>of</strong><br />

total tax revenue while other countries range from 20 to over 30 per cent.<br />

Table 6: Percentage <strong>of</strong> tax revenue to GDP<br />

<strong>of</strong> various countries in 2007<br />

Country %<br />

Thail<strong>and</strong> 17.0<br />

Venezuela 25.0<br />

Japan 27.4<br />

United States 28.0<br />

Turkey 32.5<br />

Russia 36.9<br />

Engl<strong>and</strong> 39.0<br />

Germany 40.6<br />

Sweden 49.7<br />

Source: Ministry <strong>of</strong> Finance <strong>and</strong> Heritage Foundation, 2008

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