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Edited by Parthasarathi Shome, this Handbook was written primarily for economists who are responsible for analyzing and evaluating economic policies of developing countries at an applied level, and who would benefit from a comprehensive discussion of the concepts, principles, and prevailing issues of taxation.
The 1980s trends were to lower marginal personal income tax rates, scale down rate structures, and apply the highest rate at lower levels of per capita GDP. In the 1990s, driven by fiscal deficits and unemployment, and difficulty in linking high marginal rates to low incentives or revenue productivity, tax authorities are again demonstrating an interest in increasing marginal rates. This will burden those that are correctly paying the tax. Instead, equity and revenue productivity should be improved through minimum taxes, presumptive taxes, adequate inclusion of capital income in the tax base, revitalization of property taxes, and selected luxury taxes.
Small taxpayers should pay their appropriate revenue share while their compliance costs should be reduced. This assumes importance as restructuring in emerging markets has meant rapid growth in services through self-employed small entrepreneurs, who have good revenue potential. Administrative facilitators such as a single tax covering income tax, VAT, and social security tax, at a reduced rate, do not lower tax evasion. They increase vertical and horizontal inequity, and lead to adverse resource allocation. A strategy is needed, extending modernization achieved in large taxpayer units (LTUs) to small taxpayers, including rationalization of collection and reporting of revenue data for policy formulation.
Written by Ved P. Gandhi, Liam P. Ebrill, George A. Mackenzie, Luis Mañas-Antón, Jitendra R. Modi, Somchai Richupan, Fernando Sanchez-Ugarte, and Parthasarathi Shome, this book contains 12 articles. It examines the relevance to developing countries of the tax policy recommendations of supply-side economists and attempts to delineate policy guidelines to ensure that fiscal management enhances rather than inhibits growth and efficiency in the wider economy.
The authors examine the numerous structural and policy changes Indian authorities have adopted since the 1991 balance of payments crisis; how these changes helped India weather the Asian financial crisis of 1997-98; the risks to fiscal sustainability and their implications for growth; the challenges facing monetary policy in the face of financial market liberalization; and the benefits of structural reform and fiscal policy for growth, poverty, and the reduction of regional disparities.
From the mid-1980s to early 1990s, Latin American tax policy provided rich lessons for other reforming countries. Meaningful innovations led also to perceptible revenue gains. Later in the 1990s, tax policies began to drift. Shining examples of fundamental reform seemed to lose their luster. Revenue in terms of GDP also stagnated, partly reflecting over-reliance on consumption taxes and neglect of taxable capacity on incomes. The stagnation has been exacerbated by excessively simplified administrative practices. Based on these developments and on the limited taxability of internationally mobile capital, the paper anticipates a likely tax structure for the new century.
India has a long history of running fiscal deficits. Two broad considerations motivate a government to run a deficit: tax smoothing and tax tilting. This paper tests a version of Barro’s tax-smoothing model, using Indian data for the period 1951-52 to 1996-97. The empirical results indicate that the central government of India has tax-smoothed, while the regional governments of India have not. The paper also finds evidence of tax tilting, reflected in financial repression, which has led to the accumulation of excessive public liabilities.
The IMF has been a major participant in the challenge of transforming many African, Asian, and European countries from centrally planned to market economies. The authors of this book, mainly staff members of the IMF, have distilled their firsthand experience with fiscal reform in transition economies into 15 case studies of these countries. In doing so they analyze issues of privatization, fiscal federalism, social safety nets, and the net worth of the Soviet Union. The editor of the volume is Vito Tanzi, Director of the IMF's Fiscal Affairs Department.
Contributed seminar papers with reference to India.