There's a thought that the Bangladeshi tax system should expand out to make sure it covers the rural economy.
There's also some worry that the informal sector -- including much of agriculture but also rickshaw drivers, construction workers, and many more, possibly as much as 85% of the country -- doesn't have much in the way of rights or benefits. No sick pay, little in the way of employment protections and so on.
These are the same problems.
Or, rather, the solution is to treat them both as the same problem.
It's possible to have two wildly contrasting views of the government itself. It's an imposition by the state -- or the bureaucracy perhaps -- upon the people.
We have to give up part of our incomes to pay for those freeloaders. The advantage of this view is that it's definitely true of some of them, the disadvantage is that it's not true of them all.
The second view is that there are things we can only gain by having a government. So, as we want to have those things, then to have it we've got to pay for it.
There isn't anyone else to pay for the government other than citizens after all.
The advantage of this view is that it's true while the disadvantage is that it's not true of everything the government wants to do to us.
Sorry, do for us, of course.
So, we've these two seemingly different problems. A very large portion of the economy -- of the people -- isn't paying into the system that produces the good things we desire from the government.
But, also, that same very large portion isn't getting much from the government.
We can collapse these two down to one problem -- make the government useful to the poor, the rural and informal workers, and they'll happily pay into the system.
What they'll get from being in the formal system will be worth more to them than the price they have to pay for it.
Well, that's the hope at least.
There's not much tax revenue to be had from poor people because, well, they're poor and by definition this means they've not much money.
So we can do this slowly, it doesn't make much difference to tax revenues if this takes a number of years to all happen.
Making sure the poor gain more from the government than they have to pay for it is easy in one sense. We have a progressive tax system, the rich do pay more than the poor.
In another sense it's quite difficult -- we need to make sure that the government only does those things which benefit those who pay for it.
As we all know, that's not entirely true even now.
So we need to have a government which only does those things which must be done -- and which can only be done by the government.
The other way to put this is that a limited government is worth having so a limited government won't have all that much trouble collecting the taxes to pay for it.
It's possible to think that this should apply more generally, not just to the poor. At which point I would agree, that's largely my political position. As much government as we absolutely must have and no more, even as I'm aware many disagree with me.
But the point I'm making here is that we're trying to tempt those rural and informal workers into the warm embrace of taxes. The way to do this is to make them an attractive offer.
Rather than force them into the system, make them want to be a part of it. Those rights and benefits of being within the system therefore need to be greater than the costs of being within it.
We could, of course, try to force everyone into being registered with the state, into having to pay for it, but as recent events have shown, the country isn't really all that happy with being forced. Better to tempt therefore.
Make being part of the formal economy attractive. Make it cost less than the benefits gained and people will flock to it.
From my point of view, from my political position, there's one more attraction to this. If we're to tempt people into the tax-paying net, not force them, then by definition we'll only have as much tax as is worth paying.
Rather than how much the bureaucracy would like us to be forced to be paid, they'll be limited to what we're happy to pay.
Which, I argue, is the right way to view government and taxation.
We only have as much of both as we think is worth having.
Not as much as they think is worth having, but as much as we, the people paying for it, think it is.
Which, for a bad government, wouldn't be all that much now, would it?
