Social protection in industrial countries has been provided through regulations, tax expenditures, and public spending. This paper argues that globalization will affect governments’ ability to continue providing this social protection at the level of recent decades. Specifically, tax...

A tax on gross assets has been introduced in some developing countries where several factors (most notably, high inflation) enabled apparently viable enterprises to report losses for income tax purposes. The idea of a tax on the value of assets, rather than on the income that the assets...

In 2005, the German government announced a far-reaching fiscal adjustment program. This paper uses the IMF’s Global Fiscal Model to study its impact and explores options for addressing long-term pressures from population aging. The growth effects of the planned VAT increase are likely modest,...

In recent years the level of taxation of many developing countries has changed dramatically over relatively short periods. These changes are too large and too sudden to attribute fully to a deterioration in tax administration or to changes in the traditional determinants of tax levels. The paper...

This paper compares Canadian central government budget forecasting with forecasting by other industrial countries. While fiscal forecasting in Canada is governed by one of the strongest institutional frameworks, quantitative analysis suggests that budget projections of macroeconomic and fiscal...

Budget revenue forecasts should be best estimates of expected receipts. Often they are not. This paper analyzes the rationale for overstated revenue forecasts and derives conditions for intentional biases. A theoretical model demonstrates that overstated revenue forecasts can be the result of...