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I would like to know why is would used in the following paragraph. For sure, we could have used will or may. Isn’t it?

It is from an editorial section of a newspaper:

India's ease of doing business
Harmonization of laws, procedures and rates of taxes will improve environment of compliance as all returns to be filled online, input credits to be verified online reducing need to deal with different tax authorities. It would also discourage mere invoice shipping.

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    If this example was transcribed correctly: “will improve environment of compliance” is not standard English. The whole first sentence has multiple problems.
    – whiskeychief
    Aug 24, 2019 at 18:11

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The structure of the paragraph is:

Harmonization [...] will improve [... and] It would discourage [...]

and is not OK because it breaks parallelism.

To be OK it should read either:

Harmonization [...] will improve [... and] It will also discourage [...]

or:

Harmonization [...] would improve [... and] It would also discourage [...]

If parallelism is not wanted, e.g. because one action is certain (improve) while the other one is uncertain (discourage), then the text should read something like:

Harmonization [...] will improve [... and] It might also discourage [...]

So your assumption that "would" is not proper was OK, as well as you were close about the use of "may".

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    There is no need for parallelism in two separate sentences.
    – Lambie
    Aug 24, 2019 at 18:33
  • There may be no need, but sometimes things just sound better, with it. At least to me.
    – virolino
    Aug 26, 2019 at 5:15

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