Welfare dominance and the design of excise taxation in Cote d'Ivoire

Governments in developing countries are continuously searching for new and improved tax bases. Existing methods of taxation in these countries frequently fall short of meeting acceptable criteria of efficiency, equity and administrative ease. This paper argues that there is a compelling fiscal rationale for encouraging greater reliance on taxing the consumption of electrical and telephone (ET) services. Greater emphasis on this selective commodity tax base would contribute to the achievement of taxpayer equity and would be administratively easy to impose. In addition, the efficiency characteristics of this form of taxation may also add to the attractiveness of the ET base.Economic Theory&Research,Environmental Economics&Policies,Public Sector Economics&Finance,Banks&Banking Reform,Inequality

Tax reform in Malawi

This paper examines Malawi's recent efforts to reform its tax system. Malawi embarked on a comprehensive tax reform with World Bank assistance in the latter half of the 1980s. This paper concentrates on the problems in the revenue system that provided the impetus to reform, the nature of the solutions that were offered, and the issues raised in implementing the reforms. Since many of these reforms are still being introduced into Malawi's economy, their ultimate success will have to await future analysis. This paper gives an overview of Malawi's economy and tax system and discusses its evolution up to the time of the Bank's involvement in the mid-1980s. The reform agenda is outlined and the implementation of that agenda to date is discussed. The paper concludes with a brief set of lessons that can be learned from the Malawi experience.Environmental Economics&Policies,Public Sector Economics&Finance,Economic Theory&Research,Banks&Banking Reform,Municipal Financial Management

Lessons from tax reform : an overview

The World Bank's tax reform project is an attempt to document and analyze the experience with tax reform in ten developing countries. The purpose of this project has been to try and obtain a better appreciation of how developing countries may improve the performance of their tax systems. Towards this end, each country study has delved into the questions of what motivated these tax reforms, what they were intended to accomplish, how they were implemented and how successful they have been in achieving their objectives. This paper attempts to discern empirical regularities to see whether there are some general lessons that can be extracted from a comparison of the experience with tax reform in different countries. The countries encompassed by this project are Turkey, Indonesia, Korea, Bolivia, Colombia, Mexico, Jamaica, Morocco, Malawi and Zimbabwe.Taxation&Subsidies,Public Sector Economics&Finance,Environmental Economics&Policies,Economic Theory&Research,Banks&Banking Reform

Agricultural Policy and Income Distribution in Colombia

Paper by Wayne R. Thirs

Measuring the capability to raise revenue process and output dimensions and their application to the Zambia revenue authority

The worldwide diffusion of the good governance agenda and new public management has triggered a renewed focus on state capability and, more specifically, on the capability to raise revenue in developing countries. However, the analytical tools for a comprehensive understanding of the capability to raise revenue remain underdeveloped. This article aims at filling this gap and presents a model consisting of the three process dimensions ‘information collection and processing’, ‘merit orientation’ and ‘administrative accountability’. ‘Revenue performance’ constitutes the fourth capability dimension which assesses tax administration’s output. This model is applied to the case of the Zambia Revenue Authority. The dimensions prove to be valuable not only for assessing the how much but also the how of collecting taxes. They can be a useful tool for future comparative analyses of tax administrations’ capabilities in developing countries.Die weltweite Verbreitung der Good-Governance- und New-Public-Management-Konzepte hat zu einer zunehmenden Konzentration auf staatliche Leistungsfähigkeit und, im Besonderen, auf die Leistungsfähigkeit der Steuererhebung in Entwicklungsländern geführt. Allerdings bleiben die analytischen Werkzeuge für ein umfassendes Verständnis von Leistungsfähigkeit unterentwickelt. Dieser Artikel stellt hierfür ein Modell vor, das die drei Prozess-Dimensionen „Sammeln und Verarbeiten von Informationen“, „Leistungsorientierung der Mitarbeiter“ und „Verantwortlichkeit der Verwaltung“ beinhaltet. „Einnahmeperformanz“ ist die vierte Dimension und erfasst den Output der Steuerverwaltung. Das mehrdimensionale Modell wird für die Analyse der Leistungsfähigkeit der Steuerbehörde Zambias (Zambia Revenue Authority) genutzt. Es erweist sich nicht nur für die Untersuchung des Wieviel, sondern auch des Wie des Erhebens von Steuern als wertvoll. Die vier Dimensionen können in Zukunft zur umfassenden und vergleichenden Analyse der Leistungsfähigkeit verschiedener Steuerverwaltungen in Entwicklungsländern genutzt werden

Tax Policy in Pakistan: An Assessment of Major Taxes and Options for Reform

This paper undertakes a critical evaluation of the strengths and weaknesses of all of Pakistan’s major sources of tax revenue: the individual income tax, the corporate income tax, the sales tax, excise taxes and trade taxes on imports. For each major tax it describes the nature of the current tax base and the rate or rate structure that is applied to that base. After that exercise the paper identifies certain features of each tax that raise significant concerns for tax policy and constitute the beginning of an agenda for future tax reform. In each case the tax policy issues that have been flagged are discussed within a policy framework that appeals to the broadly accepted norms of “good” taxation and international experience in grappling with these issues. The concluding section of this paper sets forth for consideration an array of tax reform proposals that attempt to address the most important flaws and problems that have been detected in Pakistan’s tax system.Pakistan, Pakistan Taxation, fiscal decentralization, revenue mobolization, sources of tax revenue