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Showing 97 - 108 of 127 publications
January 2015

Information Technology and Fiscal Capacity in a Developing Country: Evidence from Ethiopia

by Merima Ali, Abdulaziz Shifa, Abebe Shimeles & Firew Woldeyes

Governments in developing countries are typically constrained by a limited fiscal capacity to finance the provision of essential public goods – a constraint that has been cited as one of the fundamental challenges to economic development. Several developing countries have recently implemented electronic tax systems (ETS) to improve monitoring tax compliance using modern information technology…

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January 2015

Norms, Power and the Socially Embedded Realities of Market Taxation in Northern Ghana

by Wilson Prichard & Vanessa van den Boogaard

The advance of decentralisation efforts in Africa has brought with it expanded discussion of local government taxation, and the potential for tax reform to spur broader state building and governance gains. However, while this literature has acknowledged the importance of local politics and context, it has remained largely grounded in a formal understanding of local…

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January 2015

Revenue Pressure on Mexican Municipalities: Does it Lead to Greater Accountability?

by Caroline Pӧschl

Development scholars are taking renewed interest in the taxation-accountability theory, which broadly claims that if governments are dependent on taxation they will become less corrupt and more accountable to citizens. The need to raise tax revenue is said to spark incentives that lead to mutually beneficial bargaining between the government and its citizens, through which citizens…

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January 2015

Global Taxes and International Taxation: Mirage and Reality

by Richard M. Bird

Many global taxes have been proposed over the years. This study reviews the more important global tax proposals and concludes that, while many such ideas seem inappropriate or inadequately thought through, others are worth taking seriously. In reality, however, no global governance structure to impose such taxes exists or is likely to emerge in the…

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November 2014

International Distribution of the Corporate Tax Base: Implications of Different Apportionment Factors under Unitary Taxation

by Alex Cobham & Simon Loretz

Under the current system of separate accounting, tax-motivated international profit shifting results in misalignment of profits and real economic activity. While the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Base Erosion and Profit Shifting initiative aims to measure and curtail this, critics claim serious progress is only possible with greater emphasis on formulary apportionment methods…

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November 2014

Unitary Taxation and International Tax Rules

by Reuven Avi-Yonah & Zachée Pouga Tinhaga

Any proposal for adoption of a unitary tax (UT) system ought to clear the first and most common hurdle of its compatibility, or lack of it, with the current norms in the international tax system – specifically, the current tax treaty network. This paper argues that unitary taxation is compatible with most of the current…

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November 2014

Unitary Taxation of the Finance Sector

by Kerrie Sadiq

Multinational financial institutions (MNFIs) play a significant role in financing the activities of their clients in developing nations. Consistent with the ‘follow-the-customer’ phenomenon which explains financial institution expansion, these entities are increasingly profiting from activities associated with this growing market. However, not only are MNFIs persistent users of tax havens, but also, more than other…

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September 2014

Electoral Competitiveness, Political Budget Cycles and Taxation in Developing Countries

by Wilson Prichard

Despite significant evidence of ‘political budget cycles’ affecting public expenditure, studies of the impact of elections on tax collection have reached mixed conclusions. Drawing on significantly improved government revenue data, this paper finds, contrary to earlier research, that when we focus on all executive elections in developing countries there is no significant effect on levels of tax…

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September 2014

Taxation, Non-Tax Revenue and Democracy: New Evidence Using New Cross-Country Data

by Wilson Prichard, Paola Salardi & Paul Segal

A large body of cross-country econometric research has investigated the possibility of a political resource curse, by which access to extensive natural resources reduces the extent of democracy and accountability. However, this literature has been plagued by problematic data and correspondingly inappropriate model specification. Dominant theories of the political resource curse focus on the political consequences…

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September 2014

Tax Structures, Economic Growth and Development

by Kyle McNabb & Philippe LeMay-Boucher

This paper investigates the relationship between tax structures and economic growth in a panel of developed and developing countries. In order to raise revenue, low-income countries have historically relied more heavily on international trade taxes, whilst richer nations employ comparatively more consumption and income taxes. Using the new Government Revenue Dataset (GRD) from the International…

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September 2014

Aid and Taxation: Exploring the Relationship Using New Data

by Oliver Morrissey, Wilson Prichard & Samantha Torrance

This paper examines cross-country evidence concerning the relationship between aid and taxation using a new dataset compiled by the International Centre for Tax and Development (ICTD), and including some extensions to the empirical specification common in the literature. We are unable to replicate the key findings of Gupta et al. (2004) and Benedek et al….

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September 2014

Foreign Aid and Domestic Taxation: Multiple Sources, One Conclusion

by Paul Clist

There are genuine concerns that foreign aid may crowd out domestic tax revenue. In the short run this would have negative consequences for the recipient government’s revenue, and over a longer period could corrode governance through breaking the social contract. In recent years, two papers have presented empirical results that suggest while aid loans are…

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