This book shows how Pakistan’s inability to collect taxes reflects a broader disconnection between the state and its citizens, which translates into growing fiscal deficits, poor service delivery, increasing socio economic inequalities and low democratic accountability. Through extensive primary fieldwork, which included original interviews with tax bureaucrats and policymakers, detailed archival work and analysis of…
Read moreRecent decades have seen important progress in strengthening country tax systems. Yet many areas of reform have remained stubbornly resistant to major improvements. Overall, revenue collection still falls short of that needed for effective governance and service delivery. Tax collection is too often riddled with high rates of evasion among large corporations and the rich…
Read moreThe Routledge Handbook of Smuggling offers a comprehensive survey of interdisciplinary research related to smuggling, reflecting on key themes, and charting current and future trends. Divided into six parts and spanning over 30 chapters, the volume covers themes such as mobility, borders, violent conflict, and state politics, as well as looks at the smuggling of…
Read moreWe discuss the history, political determinants and current challenges of global tax governance. We divide the last century into three eras: foundation, during which states built a regime to prevent double taxation using bilateral treaties and soft multilateral coordination; stability, during which this regime failed to adapt to the growth in volume and complexity of…
Read moreIn Imposing Standards: The North-South Dimension to Global Tax Politics, ICTD Research Fellow Martin Hearson shifts the focus of political rhetoric regarding international tax rules from tax havens and the Global North to the damaging impact of this regime on the Global South. Even when not exploited by tax dodgers, international tax standards place severe limits…
Read moreThis chapter provides a review of the political science literature on the international tax regime. First, we distinguish between (1) interest- and (2) power-based, as well as (3) institutionalist and (4) ideational accounts. We show how all four theoretical perspectives contribute to explaining the institutional design, development over time and policy outcomes of global tax…
Read moreIn this chapter, Moore and Prichard provide two different kinds of answers to the question of how governments of developing countries can increase tax revenues. First, they discuss seven potential revenue sources that governments of developing countries tend to use less than they should. Mining, tobacco and alcohol, the incomes and wealth of rich people,…
Read moreTaxation binds the state together with its citizens, and with other economic actors operating within its borders. The growth of cross-border capital flows and global corporations has complicated these taxing relationships, creating opportunities for competition and cooperation between states. ‘Double taxation’ occurs when two or more states disagree over who has the right to tax…
Read moreThe world’s lower-income countries face an urgent need for public revenue to build social and economic infrastructure. These countries, however, face a dilemma in seeking to tax the income of multinational companies operating within their borders. On the one hand, because lower-income countries face substantial limitations on their ability to raise revenue from broad-based taxes…
Read moreIn The Oxford Handbook of the Politics of Development, two of America’s leading political scientists on the issue, Carol Lancaster and Nicolas van de Walle, have assembled an international cast of leading scholars to craft a broad, state-of-the-art work on this vitally important topic. Chapter 13, written by Mick Moore, explores the impact of taxation on politics…
Read moreTaxing Africa is an accessible and comprehensive introduction to the crucial debates around taxation and development in Africa. The book offers a fascinating insight into the key issues facing policy makers, tax collectors, civil society activists and donors working to increase revenues to finance sustainable development in Africa. From the colonial roots of taxation on…
Read moreThe international tax system needs a paradigm shift. The rules devised over 80 years ago treat the different parts of a multinational enterprise as if they were independent entities, although they also give national tax authorities powers to adjust the accounts of these entities. This creates a perverse incentive for multinationals to create ever more…
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