Administration and the Public Revenue System: A View of Tax Administration

Public administration has historically concentrated on the production and delivery of public services. Few such services, however, can be provided without the transfer of resources from private to public use. Except in the case of seizure of private resources (commandeering, condemnation, military draft, etc.), public agencies must purchase their resources at prevailing market prices. For the agency to conduct this purchasing activity, it must have obtained command over money. The processes of obtaining this money are the revenue-raising activities of the public agency, and these activities are, for any government, equally as important as the spending activities. Every dollar spent must have been rasied from some source. These revenue sources include money creation, borrowing, sale of governmental services, intergovernmental aid, and taxation. The Constitution limits money creation to the federal government and aid obviously does not involve net increases in public resources. Each source has particular conditions under which it is most satisfactory for use, but taxation is the source most governments will use to finance most of their activities.1 For this reason, this article will focus on the administration of tax systems to examine the little-examined "other side" of public administration.