Across the world, tax effort has been increasingly based on regressive consumption and payroll taxes, which depress consumption and employment. The current tax system is obsolete. It under-taxes financial wealth and transactions as well as negative externalities such as pollution and short-term capital flows, while simultaneously over-taxing the manufacturing sector, public services and, in…
In November of last year I visited Colombo, Sri Lanka, for a conference on tax and development. It was organised by the Institute of Policy Studies, together with the International Centre for Tax and Development at IDS. After the conference, my friend Anjali asked me about what had been discussed, and what it meant to her as a citizen of…
We have just launched a research report on ‘Who drives economic reform in Vietnam’s provinces?’. Vietnam continues to surprise the world with the speed and depth of its economic transformation. Our project finds that the decentralisation of economic power from central to provincial government has contributed to this success. It explores who drives the economic reform…
The OECD’s Task Force on Tax and Development is neither the most streamlined of these affiliates – it has more than 100 members – nor the one closest to the centre of power. It to a large degree represents the interests of non-member developing countries in this rich country club. But the meetings of the…
Yes, it sounds very tedious. Accounting does not interest most people concerned with development. We may agree it is necessary, but we do not think it is very interesting. And most of us do not understand it. How many of us can really read a balance sheet, or understand an income statement? The accounts of…
