Q."Direct taxes promote equity, but indirect taxes are easier to collect." Comment.

Each type of tax has a genuine strength the other lacks, which is exactly why real tax systems (including India's) use a mix of both rather than relying on either alone.

Why direct taxes promote equity: a progressive direct tax (like income tax, with rising slab rates) charges a higher proportion of tax to those with a higher ability to pay, and exempts or lightly taxes those with lower incomes — this directly reflects the principle of taxation according to ability to pay, and is redistributive, narrowing income inequality when combined with government welfare spending funded by it.

Why indirect taxes are easier to collect: an indirect tax (such as GST) is collected in small instalments each time a purchase is made, from every buyer in the supply chain and every final consumer, without the tax authority needing to determine any individual's total annual income or run a full assessment process for each payer. Compliance is largely built into the point-of-sale transaction itself (the seller collects and remits it), spreading the administrative burden very widely and making evasion comparatively harder to organise at the retail level, since the tax is baked into every transaction's price. …

Treating the statement as an either/or choice between the two tax types, rather than recognising that real tax systems deliberately combine both to capture the complementary stre …