Policy Brief: Taxation and Social Security in Agriculture

Tax concessions to farmers and landowners often represent an alternative to programmes incurring direct government outlay yet, because no budgetary spending takes place, the level of public scrutiny is often low. Such concessions often fall outside the remit of agricultural policy analysts and administrators and tend to be politically sensitive. Consequently, tax concessions have been little studied and are poorly documented. Yet they carry implications for production, land use, incomes, trade, the environment, rural society and other issues.