Focusing on the Few: the Role of Large Taxpayer Units in the Revenue Strategies of Developing Countries

Part I of this paper first reviews the spread of LTUs, and briefly describes the experience of LTUs in a few selected countries. This section takes up the question of the LTU as an enclave administrative reform versus semi-autonomous revenue agencies and "whole of government" reform involving broad based wages, human resources planning and anti-corruption measures.Part II examines the emergence of the LTU and its relationships to the remainder of the tax administration system in different kinds of developing and transition economies, such as (i)capable developing states, (ii) administratively weak but governance improving states, and (iii)captured states. The relative success of LTUs can improve our understanding of the enclave approach to governance reforms as well as yielding insights that are intrinsic to the challenge of improving revenue mobilization. LTUs and their roles in developing country economies can also be interpreted through the prism of recent revisionist writings on best policies for the tax mix in the presence of a major informal sector and a government sector with a highly constrained taxing capacity and high vulnerability to corruption.Working Paper Number 04-44

Evidence about the policy assumptions about lay behaviour

This deliverable provides an analysis of the early fieldwork reports that have been produced as part of WP3. Its focus is on identifying the assumptions that are evident in the approaches of the policy partners to human behaviour around sustainability. The themes of this early work will form one focus of subsequent interactions with the policy partners and will be used as the basis for developing a schedule for further investigations to be deployed with policy makers in each countr

Willingness to Pay for Drug Rehabilitation: Implications for Cost Recovery

Objectives: This study estimates the value that clients place on drug rehabilitation services at the time of intake and how this value varies with the probability of success and availability of social services. Methods: We interviewed 241 heroin users who had been referred to, but had not yet entered, methadone maintenance treatment in Baltimore, Maryland. We asked each subject to state a preference among three hypothetical treatment programs that varied across 3 domains: weekly fee paid by the client out of pocket ($5 to$100), presence/absence of case management, and time spent heroin-free (3 to 24 months). Each subject was asked to complete 18 orthogonal comparisons. Subsequently each subject was asked if they likely would enroll in their preferred choice among the set of three. We computed the expected willingness to pay (WTP) as the probability of enrollment times the fee considered in each choice considered from a multivariate logistic model that controlled for product attributes. We also estimated the price elasticity of demand. Results: We found that 21% of clients preferred programs that were logically dominated by other options. The median expected fee subjects were willing to pay for a program that offered 3 months of heroin-free time was $7.30 per week, rising to$17.11 per week for programs that offered 24 months of heroin-free time. The availability of case management increased median WTP by $5.64 per week. The fee was the most important predictor of the self-reported probability of enrollment with a price elasticity of -0.39 (SE 0.042). Conclusions: Clients' median willingness to pay for drug rehabilitation fell short of the average program costs of$82 per week, which reinforces the need for continued subsidization as drug treatment has high positive externalities. Clients will pay more for higher rates of treatment success and for the presence of case management.

Practices, Challenges and Prospects for Public Sector Taxation in Ethiopia

The tax compliance behaviour of the public sector has been largely neglected in the tax literature. Other than appearing in tax laws as taxpayers, in practice the compliance strategies employed by revenue authorities do not sufficiently cater to government agencies. Enforcement of tax payments on these agencies is generally perceived to be a difficult undertaking and of less value than other priorities. One strategy to improve tax compliance in the public sector has been to separate them from other taxpayers and to provide them with special treatment. This strategy has been employed in Uganda, where it has been reportedly quite successful, and in Nigeria, where there is currently limited empirical evidence to evaluate its success. This paper aims to explore the compliance level of the public sector in Ethiopia, the legal and administrative challenges at the Ethiopian Revenue and Customs Authority (ERCA) to effectively tax public sector entities, and to assess whether segmenting the public sector from other taxpayers would be a relevant strategy in Ethiopia. The study finds that the compliance level of the public sector is wanting, especially in regards to remitting withheld taxes to ERCA. The bottleneck appears to be caused primarily by administrative weaknesses and less by gaps in existing tax laws. This study finds a number of administrative inefficiencies related to ERCA’s taxation of public sector entities, including: (1) the perception that enforcing tax laws on the public sector is a hard or even impossible task; (2) a fragmented VAT withholding system; (3) malfunctioning e-filing and e-payment systems; (4) limited taxpayer sensitisation campaigns; (5) low levels of automation; and (6) unsatisfactory tax services rendered. From the perspective of public sector taxpayers themselves, the study also finds a number of factors that undermine compliance, including: (1) a lack of sufficient care and attention to tax obligations among managers; (2) the fact that some government entities use a single taxpayer identification number (TIN) for many branches makes it difficult to trace transactions; and (3) the lack of supportive actions from political leaders. The study recommends the creation of a decentralised office to administer public sector taxation, conditional on the strong support of leaders from the revenue authority as well as other key government officials

Alter ego, state of the art on user profiling: an overview of the most relevant organisational and behavioural aspects regarding User Profiling.

This report gives an overview of the most relevant organisational and\ud behavioural aspects regarding user profiling. It discusses not only the\ud most important aims of user profiling from both an organisation’s as\ud well as a user’s perspective, it will also discuss organisational motives\ud and barriers for user profiling and the most important conditions for\ud the success of user profiling. Finally recommendations are made and\ud suggestions for further research are given

Marketing Youth Services

published or submitted for publicatio

Taxing Government: The Case of the Uganda Revenue Authority’s Public Sector Office

Virtually all the literature on taxation presents it as a relationship between government and non-government taxpayers. And even though in practice government organisations are – or should be – big taxpayers, very few revenue authorities treat these organisations as a separate segment of taxpayers. Different categories of taxpayers behave differently and so need to be treated differently to best encourage their compliance. With this in mind, in 2014, the Uganda Revenue Authority (URA) established the Public Sector Office (PSO) as a separate office to manage the affairs of government ministries, departments and agencies. Subsequently, the duties of the office were expanded to include the management of the affairs of politically influential individuals. Within the first year of its operation, the PSO had increased revenue collections from government organisations by 194 per cent when compared to the previous year. The PSO is now the second largest contributor to domestic tax collection in Uganda, after the Large Taxpayers’ Office. Its revenue share as a percentage of total domestic revenue collections grew from only 5 per cent in financial year 2014/15 to 17 per cent in 2016/17. In this paper, we examine the reasons behind establishing the public sector as a separate taxpayer segment. We also look into the factors that have enabled the success of this office. We find that the PSO’s successful performance is facilitated by a number of factors including having a proficient team of revenue officials; having the support of top URA management; collaboration and coordination with other key government offices; support from high-ranking government officials; and the use of ‘soft compliance’ strategies such as organising taxpayer workshops, making phone calls to relevant contact persons in government organisations and sending emails with reminders of due dates for filing tax returns and paying taxes

Segmentation of Potential Fraud Taxpayers and Characterization in Personal Income Tax Using Data Mining Techniques

This paper proposes an analytical framework that combines dimension reduction and data mining techniques to obtain a sample segmentation according to potential fraud probability. In this regard, the purpose of this study is twofold. Firstly, it attempts to determine tax benefits that are more likely to be used by potential fraud taxpayers by means of investigating the Personal Income Tax structure. Secondly, it aims at characterizing through socioeconomic variables the segment profiles of potential fraud taxpayer to offer an audit selection strategy for improving tax compliance and improve tax design. An application to the annual Spanish Personal Income Tax sample designed by the Institute for Fiscal Studies is provided. Results obtained confirm that the combination of data mining techniques proposed offers valuable information to contribute to the study of tax frau

Early Implementation of the Health Coverage Tax Credit in Maryland, Michigan, and North Carolina: A Case Study Summary

Examines the effectiveness of HCTCs and assesses their prospects as a model for broader reforms. Proposes reforms to improve HCTCs' ability to help current target populations and aid policymakers in designing future health insurance tax credits

Desk Top Review on the Effectiveness of Presumptive Tax Administration on Revenue Collection by ZIMRA

This desk top research evaluated the effectiveness of Presumptive tax administration on revenue collection. The method of assessment and collection of presumptive tax were discussed as well as the challenges that are encountered by Zimbabwe Revenue Authority (ZIMRA) on presumptive tax administration on revenue collection. The challenges have negatively affected the collection of presumptive tax. The research findings revealed that the effectiveness of presumptive tax administration is affected by the high tax rates that were imposed by the ministry of finance relative to the income levels that the cottage industry earn on a monthly basis, high levels of corruption and the political interference that occur. The study recommends that authorities should implement a tax system that will provide mechanisms for the informal sector operators to graduate into the normal tax system as well as intensifying education and awareness campaigns to the informal sector operators