Download or read book The VAT in Developing and Transitional Countries written by Richard Bird and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2007-09-03 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Value-added tax (VAT) dominates tax systems around the world. But should every country have a VAT? Is VAT always as good as it could be in economic, equity and administrative terms? In developing and transitional countries the answers to such questions are critical to stability, growth and development. VAT is a critical fiscal tool in most countries. But VAT can sometimes be better designed and almost always better administered. The key questions that must be answered in designing and implementing VAT are essentially the same in all countries. But different tax designs may best suit different countries facing different circumstances. This book reviews experiences with VATs around the world and assesses how the choice of particular design features may affect outcomes in particular contexts.
Download or read book The Logic of Life written by Tim Harford and published by Anchor Canada. This book was released on 2009-02-24 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In The Logic of Life, bestselling author Tim Harford quite simply makes sense of this world. Life often seems to defy logic. The receptionist is clearly smarter than the boss who earns fifty times her salary. Arbitrary lines starkly divide the desirable districts of the city from the dangerous ones. Voters flock to the polling booths to elect candidates who’ll rip them off to favour special interests. None of it makes logical sense — or does it? Economist and acclaimed author Tim Harford thinks it does. By weaving stories from locations as diverse as a Vegas casino to a barroom speed date, Harford aims to persuade you that people are, in fact, surprisingly logical. When a street prostitute agrees to unprotected sex, or a teenage criminal embarks on a burglary — perhaps especially when a racist employer disregards a black job applicant — we would seem to be a million miles from rational behaviour. Harford shows that, discomfitingly, we are not. It turns out that the unlikeliest of people are complying with the logic of economics and responding to future costs and benefits, often without realizing it; and socially tragic outcomes can have their roots in individually rational decisions. Brilliantly reasoned, always entertaining and often provocative, The Logic of Life is a book to help you understand yourself and the world around you.
Download or read book Public Finance in Developing and Transitional Countries written by Richard Miller Bird and published by Edward Elgar Publishing. This book was released on 2003 with total page 392 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A collection of most of the papers and comments presented at the conference held in honor of Richard Bird in the spring of 2001. Section I: Intergovernmental fiscal relations; Section II: Tax evasion, tax administration and the role of government; Section III: Fiscal policy.
Download or read book Revenue Mobilization in Developing Countries written by International Monetary Fund. Fiscal Affairs Dept. and published by International Monetary Fund. This book was released on 2011-08-03 with total page 86 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Fund has long played a lead role in supporting developing countries’ efforts to improve their revenue mobilization. This paper draws on that experience to review issues and good practice, and to assess prospects in this key area.
Download or read book Estimating VAT Pass Through written by Ms.Dora Benedek and published by International Monetary Fund. This book was released on 2015-09-30 with total page 41 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This paper estimates the pass through of VAT changes to consumer prices, using a unique dataset providing disaggregated, monthly data on prices and VAT rates for 17 Eurozone countries over 1999-2013. Pass through is much less than full on average, and differs markedly across types of VAT change. For changes in the standard rate, for instance, final pass through is about 100 percent; for reduced rates it is significantly less, at around 30 percent; and for reclassifications it is essentially zero. We also find: differing dynamics of pass through for durables and non-durables; no significant difference in pass through between rate increases and decreases; signs of non-monotonicity in the relationship between pass through and the breadth of the consumption base affected; and indications of significant anticipation effects together with some evidence of lagged effects in the two years around reform. The results are robust against endogeneity and attenuation bias.
Download or read book The Rise of the Value Added Tax written by Kathryn James and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2015-04-30 with total page 495 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explores how the value-added tax (VAT) has risen from relative obscurity to become one of the world's most dominant revenue instruments.
Download or read book Value Added Tax written by Alan Schenk and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2007-01-22 with total page 560 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book integrates legal, economic, and administrative materials about value added tax. Its principal purpose is to provide comprehensive teaching tools - laws, cases, analytical exercises, and questions drawn from the experience of countries and organizations from all areas of the world. It also serves as a resource for tax practitioners and government officials that must grapple with issues under their VAT or their prospective VAT. The comparative presentation of this volume offers an analysis of policy issues relating to tax structure and tax base as well as insights into how cases arising out of VAT disputes have been resolved. The authors have expanded the coverage to include new VAT related developments in Europe, Asia, Africa and Australia. A chapter on financial services has been added as well as an analysis of significant new cases.
Download or read book International Tax Policy and Double Tax Treaties written by Kevin Holmes and published by IBFD. This book was released on 2007 with total page 433 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explains the concepts that underlie international tax law and double tax treaties and provides an insight into how international tax policy, law and practice operate to ultimately impose tax on international business and investment.
Download or read book Modernizing VATs in Africa written by Sijbren Cnossen and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2019-07-16 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Most African countries are in dire need of more tax revenue. In 28 out of 45 countries with a value-added tax (VAT), total tax revenue as a percentage of GDP is around 15% or less, falling short of what is necessary to finance basic human and economic development. Far from being revenue-raising instruments, current African VATs are riddled with exemptions, exclusions, and zero rates on domestic goods and services that depress revenue, are highly distortionary, and greatly complicate the administration of VAT. Modernizing VATs in Africa enables policymakers, professionals, and students to analyse African tax systems to ascertain how they can be modernized. It explains the case for VAT base-broadening over rate-increasing, arguing that exemptions and zero rates mainly accrue benefits for higher-income groups. Even more persuasively, it demonstrates that the net result of fiscal systems can be equalizing if the revenue of broad-based VATs is used to finance in-kind transfers, such as healthcare and education. VAT modernization should be used to enable governments to finance development; Modernizing VATs in Africa puts a compelling case forward for how and why this can be achieved.
Download or read book Games in Economic Development written by Bruce Wydick and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2007-12-24 with total page 17 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Games in Economic Development examines the roots of poverty and prosperity through the lens of elementary game theory, illustrating how patterns of human interaction can lead to vicious cycles of poverty as well as virtuous cycles of prosperity. This book shows how both social norms and carefully designed institutions can help shape the 'rules of the game', making better outcomes in a game possible for everyone involved. The book is entertaining to read, it can be accessed with little background in development economics or game theory. Its chapters explore games in natural resource use; education; coping with risk; borrowing and lending; technology adoption; governance and corruption; civil conflict; international trade; and the importance of networks, religion, and identity, illustrating concepts with numerous anecdotes from recent world events. Comes complete with an appendix, explaining the basic ideas in game theory used in the book.
Download or read book Taxing Telecommunications in Developing Countries written by Ms.Thornton Matheson and published by International Monetary Fund. This book was released on 2017-11-15 with total page 42 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Developing countries apply numerous sector-specific taxes to telecommunications, whose buoyant revenues and formal enterprises provide a convenient “tax handle”. This paper explores whether there is an economic rationale for sector-specific taxes on telecommunications and, if so, what form they should take to balance the competing goals of promoting connectivity and mobilizing revenues. A survey of the literature finds that limited telecoms competition likely creates rents that could efficiently be taxed. We propose a “pecking order” of sector-specific taxes that could be levied in addition to standard income and value-added taxes, based on capturing rents and minimizing distortions. Taxes that target possible economic rents or profits are preferable, but their administrative challenges may necessitate reliance on service excises at the cost of higher consumer prices and lower connectivity. Taxes on capital inputs and consumer access, which distort production and restrict network access, should be avoided; so should tax incentives, which are not needed to attract foreign capital to tap a local market.
Download or read book Financing Metropolitan Governments in Developing Countries written by Roy W. Bahl and published by Lincoln Inst of Land Policy. This book was released on 2013 with total page 430 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The economic activity that drives growth in developing countries is heavily concentrated in cities. Catchphrases such as “metropolitan areas are the engines that pull the national economy” turn out to be fairly accurate. But the same advantages of metropolitan areas that draw investment also draw migrants who need jobs and housing, lead to demands for better infrastructure and social services, and result in increased congestion, environmental harm, and social problems. The challenges for metropolitan public finance are to capture a share of the economic growth to adequately finance new and growing expenditures and to organize governance so that services can be delivered in a cost-effective way, giving the local population a voice in fiscal decision making. At the same time, care must be taken to avoid overregulation and overtaxation, which will hamper the now quite mobile economic engine of private investment and entrepreneurial initiative. Metropolitan planning has become a reality in most large urban areas, even though the planning agencies are often ineffective in moving things forward and in linking their plans with the fiscal and financial realities of metropolitan government. A growing number of success stories in metropolitan finance and management, together with accumulated experience and proper efforts and support, could be extended to a broader array of forward-looking programs to address the growing public service needs of metropolitan-area populations. Nevertheless, sweeping metropolitan-area fiscal reforms have been few and far between; the urban policy reform agenda is still a long one; and there is a reasonable prospect that closing the gaps between what we know how to do and what is actually being done will continue to be difficult and slow. This book identifies the most important issues in metropolitan governance and finance in developing countries, describes the practice, explores the gap between practice and what theory suggests should be done, and lays out the reform paths that might be considered. Part of the solution will rest in rethinking expenditure assignments and instruments of finance. The “right” approach also will depend on the flexibility of political leaders to relinquish some control in order to find a better solution to the metropolitan finance problem.
Download or read book The Modern VAT written by Mr.Liam P. Ebrill and published by International Monetary Fund. This book was released on 2001-11-05 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Value-added tax, or VAT, first introduced less than 50 years ago, is now a pivotal component of tax systems around the world. The rapid and seemingly irresistible rise of the VAT is probably the most important tax development of the latter twentieth century, and certainly the most breathtaking. Written by a team of experts from the IMF, this book examines the remarkable spread and current reach of the innovative tax and draws lessons about the design and implementation of the VAT, as experienced by different countries around the world. How efficient is it as a tax, is it fair, and is it suitable for all countries? These are among the questions raised. This highly informative and well-researched book also looks at the likely future of the tax.
Download or read book Designing a Tax Administration Reform Strategy written by Ms.Katherine Baer and published by International Monetary Fund. This book was released on 1997-03-01 with total page 37 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Building on previous FAD work in the tax administration field, this paper defines broad criteria for diagnosing the problems in a country’s tax administration and formulating an appropriate reform strategy. To be effective, this strategy should be based on the size of the tax gap and the country’s particular circumstances. This paper discusses some guiding principles which have provided the basis for successful reforms, including: reducing the tax system’s complexity, encouraging taxpayers’ voluntary compliance, differentiating the treatment of taxpayers by their revenue potential, and ensuring the reform’s effective management. Also discussed are specific bottlenecks that hinder the effectiveness of the tax administration’s operations.
Download or read book Taxation and Development written by Richard M. Bird and published by . This book was released on 2014-05-15 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book From Stimulus to Consolidation written by Juan Toro R. and published by International Monetary Fund. This book was released on 2010-10-06 with total page 122 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This paper identifies policy tools that could be used for fiscal consolidation in advanced and emerging economies in the years ahead. The consolidation strategy, particularly in advanced countries, should aim to stabilize age-related spending in relation to GDP, reduce non-age-related expenditure ratios, and increase revenues. Bold reforms are needed to offset projected increases in age-related spending, particularly health care. On the revenue side, measures could include improving tax compliance, for example through better international cooperation, as well as increasing the yield from VAT by eliminating exemptions and reduced rates, further developing property taxes, and increasing excise rates within the range of rates already applicable in comparable countries.
Download or read book Making the Property Tax Work written by Roy W. Bahl and published by . This book was released on 2008 with total page 494 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Students of public finance and fiscal decentralization in developing and transitional countries have long argued for more intensive use of the property tax. It would seem the ideal choice for financing local government services. Based on a Lincoln Institute conference held in October 2006, the chapters in this book take this argument one step further in drawing on recent experience with property tax policy and administration. Two main sets of issues are addressed. First, why hasn't the property tax worked well in most developing and transitional countries? Second, what can be done to make the property tax a more relevant source for local governments in those countries? The numerous advantages of the property tax as a local government revenue source are analyzed and discussed in detail as are the many perceived disadvantages.
