This paper reviews trends in taxation and revenue in MENA countries over 1990-2012, with a focus on non-resource taxes. On average, non-resource revenues declined slightly, while resource revenues soared. Country experiences vary: rates of main taxes and their revenues tend to be higher in the...

Issues of taxation and development, which have long been a central concern of the IMF, have attracted wider and renewed interest in the last few years. This paper reflects on three broad lessons of experience: that developing countries differ vastly in tax matters, and in ways that are less than...

This paper discusses important tax policy issues facing developing countries today. It views tax policy from both the macroeconomic perspective, which focuses on broad questions such as the level and composition of tax revenue, and the microeconomic perspective, which focuses on certain design...

This paper examines the nature of gender bias in tax systems. Gender bias takes both explicit and implicit forms. Explicit gender bias is found in many personal income tax systems. Several countries, especially those in Western Europe, have undertaken to eliminate explicit gender bias in recent...

This paper reviews recent experience of technical assistance on tax policy provided by the Fiscal Affairs Department to a selected but diversified group of countries that differ both in their geographical locations and in the nature of their economies. The review finds in the technical...

With the advent of the economic and monetary union in the European Union (EU), the economic landscape of the EU will bear a striking resemblance to that of the United States in terms of fundamental attributes such as the freedom of internal movements of individuals, capital, and goods within the...

This paper studies the impact of tax-based consolidations on reelection outcomes. Using a granular database of tax-based consolidations for a panel of 10 OECD countries over the last 40 years, we find that tax reforms are politically costly but some reforms are costlier than others. Measures...

To understand the cyclical movements of value-added tax (VAT) revenues in advanced economies, this paper analyzes changes in the C-efficiency ratio by decomposing it into changes in the compliance and policy gaps between 2000 and 2014. The results from a panel of EU member countries and Japan...

This paper focuses on two core tax design issues that arise in addressing current fiscal challenges. It first explores the idea, prominent in troubled Eurozone countries, of a "fiscal devaluation": shifting from social contributions to the VAT as a way to mimic a nominal devaluation. Empirical...