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Tax systems need to be analyzed in terms of their adequacy in achieving their basic purposes, the most fundamental of which is the provision of the revenue needed to run government programs. A vitally important objective of tax policy is delivering, in a very broad sense, a balanced budget (revenues being equal to expenses) over a fiscal cycle. Countries that run excessive deficits find that these deficits must be made up eventually, and are really just deferred taxes that must be recovered.

Further, deficits cause governments to borrow, resulting in growing and compounding interest expenses on the debt, and making it that much more difficult to achieve balanced budgets and surpluses. In addition, growing government deficits and borrowing can lead to other undesirable effects, such as inflation and a “crowding out” of private borrowers in capital markets. In theory, a country could rationally strive to balance its accounts over an economic cycle of several years, but it is not easy to project how long these cycles would last.

Debt is not inherently a negative matter. For example, countries can use debt to fund public capital expenditures in the early years if these expenditures will provide benefits to future taxpayers. It is therefore reasonable to use some public debt financing with the intent of paying it back in later years. In cyclical economies, using debt to pay for capital improvements can smooth tax burdens over time.

The federal government and a number of provincial and territorial governments in Canada have adopted an accrual accounting approach to government expenditures, which requires the inclusion of all receipts and expenses as long as they are invoiced or incurred, even though they are not paid in cash. Capital costs, such as expenditures on highways and bridges, are depreciated with amounts equal to the amount of money that would be needed to maintain the capital (based on the expected life of capital before it must be replaced). Instead of charging an entire capital expenditure against revenue in a single year, the relevant amount is added to a capital account (covering, for example, public roads and highways) and depreciated in accordance with the expected life of the capital.