The increasing focus on domestic resource mobilization in developing countries means that, for researchers and policy makers, access to accurate and timely data is more important than ever. The Government Revenue Dataset (GRD) — developed by the International Centre for Tax and Development and now maintained by UNU-WIDER — remains the most complete source of…
Nations vary in their approach to transparency about taxpayers. In Norway details of everyone’s income and taxes are published in annual ‘tax lists’. In most countries the information on your tax return is considered strictly confidential to the revenue authority. In recent years countries have agreed to exchange more information amongst themselves – such as…
Last week the UN Committee of Experts on International Tax (UNTC) met at the United Nations HQ in New York, a few metres from the Security Council meetings on Syria, followed by a special session on tax of the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC). Most of the meeting dealt with detailed technical issues, as the…
For the past twenty years, Maama Sula (let’s say) has run a small fast-food restaurant in a town called Wandegeya in Kampala, Uganda. She sources the bulk of her supplies from the women in the nearby market. Because her business is relatively well-established, she pays income taxes and Value Added Tax (VAT) to the central…
There are now a range of estimates of the global scale of tax avoidance. These include: the $600 billion annual tax loss estimated by IMF researchers Crivelli et al. (2015; 2016), which divides roughly into $400 billion of OECD losses and $200 billion elsewhere; the $100 billion annual tax losses that UNCTAD’s World Investment Report…
International tax rules for multinational companies appear to be approaching a major crossroads, for three reasons. First, the OECD Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (BEPS) process is increasingly seen as unlikely to deliver on the ambition of its one stated aim, to reduce the misalignment between multinationals’ declared, taxable profits and the location of their…
Last November, I got a birthday gift from the International Monetary Fund: my very own copy of “How to Design and Enforce Tobacco Excises?” I don’t blame you for missing it—it came out 5 days before the US election. I was quite pleased to see it. I’ve been asking for an IMF statement on tobacco…
The need to achieve fiscal convergence and consolidation in Nigeria cannot be overemphasised. This is especially important considering that the economy recently slipped into recession, according to data from the National Bureau of Statistics. One notable factor for this is the high level of fiscal indiscipline at the subnational level, which mainly derives from problematic…
Policy-makers in developing countries, when choosing a mix of fiscal instruments to govern a mining or oil-and-gas development, often face a dilemma. It’s a tug-of-war between tradition, as represented by a preference for royalties that are based on the gross value of extracted product, and economic theory, represented by the use of taxes based on…
What are international tax disputes? Formally, international tax disputes are between the tax authorities of two different countries. They result from differing interpretations of the provisions of a tax treaty between the two countries. However, they mainly affect taxpayers with cross-border economic activities, usually transnational corporations (TNCs). Tax treaties are normally incorporated into domestic law. So,…
Last week I participated in a panel discussion at the Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA) Tax Summit on tax policy and economic development. Current fiscal policy is defined by a widening gap between expenditure and revenue generation putting a spotlight on the country’s tax regime and how to expand tax collection. While there are steps that…
A secure nation On a visit to Kigali, a lady extolled their army and why they have the respect of every citizen. Like every typical African, she could not reconcile how the world famous Nigerian military cannot take down Boko Haram. It is clear that we have underfunded our military in years past and recent…
