Especially, his
treatment of ahl uz zimmah needs to be highlighted.
Imam Ali (A.S.) knew
this fact very well that earlier governments, in Arabia and elsewhere, were
unpopular mainly because of inhumane nature of their tax collection.
Imam Ali (A.S.)
attributes poverty of people to the desire of rulers and officers to amass
wealth and possessions whether by fair or foul means. They wanted to make most
during the shortest time at their disposal.
He writes:
“They never learnt any
lesson from the history of nations and never paid any attention to the orders
of God”.
In the matters of
taxation, the overall approach of Imam Ali (A.S.) contains “supply-side
ideals”. This refers to a policy alternative wherein importance is attached to
production, productive agents and related tax incentives.
As against this, the
demand management approach, attaches importance to regulating/deregulating
demand to control economic fluctuations. In this context, it may be quoted from
Imam Ali (A.S.)’s letter:
“So far as collection of
land revenues and taxes are concerned you must always keep in view that the
welfare of taxpayers is of primary importance than the taxes themselves”.
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