Trends And Future Directions In Tax Policy Reform

Tax reform in Latin America during the 1980s emphasized broad-based, low-rate consumption taxes over steeply progressive income and property taxes, primarily to simplify the tax structure and facilitate tax administration. While tax reform need not necessarily raise tax-to-GDP ratios, countries that undertook tax reform experienced a higher revenue gain in terms of GDP relative to those that did not. Tax reform issues during the 1990s will include a minimum income tax, alternative corporate taxes (cash flow tax, assets tax), capturing difficult tax bases (financial intermediation, property), environment taxes, extending withholding as a taxing mechanism, and tax harmonization.

Tax reform in Latin America during the 1980s emphasized broad-based, low-rate consumption taxes over steeply progressive income and property taxes, primarily to simplify the tax structure and facilitate tax administration. While tax reform need not necessarily raise tax-to-GDP ratios, countries that undertook tax reform experienced a higher revenue gain in terms of GDP relative to those that did not.Tax reform issues during the 1990s will include a minimum income tax, alternative corporate taxes (cash flow tax, assets tax), capturing difficult tax bases (financial intermediation, property), environment taxes, extending withholding as a taxing mechanism, and tax harmonization.

As economic reform in developing countries has shifted from macroeconomic stabilization to liberalization, opportunities for legislators to influence the process and outcome of reform have increased and their role has become more important. This book focuses attention on differences in institutional structure, in political parties and electoral rules, to show how they create incentives that can explain the varying ways in which legislators respond to policy initiatives from the executive branch. In Argentina and the Philippines, presidents proposed similar fiscal reforms in the 1990s: expanding tax bases, strengthening tax administration, and redesigning tax revenue-sharing with subnational governments. Drawing on archival research and interviews with policy makers, Kent Eaton follows the path of legislation in these three areas from initial proposal to final law to reveal how it was shaped by the legislators participating in the process. Obstacles to the adoption of reform, he demonstrates, are greater in candidate-centered systems like the Philippines&’ (where the cultivation of personal reputations is paramount) than in party-centered systems like Argentina&’s (where loyalty to party leaders is emphasized). To test his argument further, Eaton looks finally at other kinds of reform ventured in these two countries and at tax reforms attempted in some other countries.

This book provides a comprehensive analysis of tax systems and tax reforms in a number of Latin American countries since the early 1990‘s, including Argentina and Brazil, Costa Rica and Mexico, Paraguay, Colombia, Chile and Uruguay. The authors present and discuss tax systems from a broad quantitative and historical perspective and describe the mai

From the mid-1980s to early 1990s, Latin American tax policy provided rich lessons for other reforming countries. Meaningful innovations led also to perceptible revenue gains. Later in the 1990s, tax policies began to drift. Shining examples of fundamental reform seemed to lose their luster. Revenue in terms of GDP also stagnated, partly reflecting over-reliance on consumption taxes and neglect of taxable capacity on incomes. The stagnation has been exacerbated by excessively simplified administrative practices. Based on these developments and on the limited taxability of internationally mobile capital, the paper anticipates a likely tax structure for the new century.

Edited by Parthasarathi Shome, this Handbook was written primarily for economists who are responsible for analyzing and evaluating economic policies of developing countries at an applied level, and who would benefit from a comprehensive discussion of the concepts, principles, and prevailing issues of taxation.

"Loayza and Soto present policy and outcome-based ways of measuring the progress of market-oriented reforms in both traditional areas of first-generation reform and the areas of institutional reform that have been emphasized lately. These policy areas are the domestic financial system, international financial markets, international trade, the labor market, the tax system, public infrastructure and public firms, the legal and regulatory framework, and governance. For each of them, the authors first discuss the general principles underlying market-oriented reform. Second, they present various indicators of the policy stance in the area in question. And third, they present various outcome indicators of the policy stance. This paper is a product of Investment Climate Team, Development Research Group is part of a larger effort in the group to understand the process of economic reform"--World Bank web site.

Revenue Administration Handbook provides a comprehensive overview of the structure and management of tax and customs administrations, covering topics such as tax policy design considerations that impact tax administration, institutional setup and strategic planning, analyticalcapacities and maturity models, core business processes, and tax sanctions. It also presents pioneering work in the field of digital transformation and how to build data science capabilities, including a roadmap for policy makers and tax officials on how to incorporate and manage disruptive technologies, such as machine learning, into building modern revenue administrations while taking into account their respective maturity levels. This practical manual provides examples from real-life World Bank projects so that policy makers, tax officials, information technology experts, and information and communication technology providers can better understand the needs of revenue administrations to design and implement the most appropriate technology solutions. This reference work is intended to serve as a tool to facilitate the progress and modernization of tax and customs administrations worldwide, and to reach not only tax experts and policy makers, but also other government officials, businesses and academic communities, as well as the larger public, since all are relevant stakeholders with an active role in day-to-day revenue administration operations. ------------------------- “This is a very timely and useful reference for tax practitioners and stakeholders, coming at a time when tax administrators continue to grapple with the challenge of how to accelerate the modernization of technology systems to remain effective in a rapidly advancing and technologydriven business environment.†? MOSES WASIKE, Senior financial management specialist, World Bank “This is an impressive piece of work that pulls together many different strains on tax administration.†? JEFFREY OWENS, Director, Global Tax Policy Center, Vienna University “Applying several technologies discussed in this handbook in an innovative manner will definitely help leapfrog countries to pursue a digital transformation agenda, especially in the areas of efficiency, productivity, and citizen satisfaction.†?