Cooperative compliance represents a shift in thinking for tax administrations, away from a deterrence approach where taxpayers are coerced to comply with tax rules and threatened by audits and penalties, toward a more responsive and collaborative approach.

Mounting external indebtedness has become a major problem for many developing countries. This may be not least a result of the fact that economists and policy-makers have tended to emphasize the benefits to the recipient countries of external borrowing to the neglect of its costs.